Look up "Origen of Alexandria" and his thoughts on reincarnation. Reincarnation was only taken out of "Christianity" by popular vote around 500-600 A.D.. It's just religious politics. There are many contemporary resources that integrate the concept of reincarnation into Christianity.
Hmm, I just computed the Hoare triple for his program and found nothing wrong. What were you using as an invariant?
Re:Obesity comes from a simple condition...
on
Obesity Contagious?
·
· Score: 1
I had a friend in school who had been active in sports all of his life. He was, by his looks very fat. Funny though, he seemed to have very little fat on him. I remember hitting him while he was flexing his stomach... he had a Buddha belly, but it was hard as a rock. He worked out way more than I did, yet he always seemed "fatter" than me. It was just his build.
I have seen two Navy Seals to date who fit this physique. They look like Santa, but somehow they can run 10-15 miles with a full 60lb pack and not be any worse off for it, and they can do this consistently. I would keel over from vomiting at about 10 miles and no pack.
One of my martial arts teachers also has this body shape. He has a big belly, big limbs, and a round pudgy little face. Yet while everyone in the room is sweating and panting from exercises or drills, he shows no outside signs of exertion.
In addition to all the other fat factors, some people are just plain round... but probably aren't extremely fat.
A lot of the things I still love to do today that I did as a kid were because my parents were actively involved and interested. Chess was definitely one of those things. Chess is pleasant to play for me because I've been playing it since I was a kid and I have a lot of fond memories associated with it, a lot of which were/are with my dad.
Of course with a masters degree, taking 6 hours of classes is generally considered full time, and you need special permission to go about 12 or so. So we're talking about two full years. I'm taking nine hours right now, and it sure ain't the load nine hours in undergrad would be, sheesh! I took at least fifteen hours every semester in my undergraduate studies, and nine hours right now seems about the same work load.
Exactly, the system is screwed. I think the real basis for the screwy system is central to the word "hype". Corporations create it, people buy into it. A post further down the line states that normally, when something is bought and found defective, you return it, no big deal. But then he states that suing is justified when he waited six hours in line to get it and got the runaround from Microsoft. Well what is Microsoft going to do, mail you the parts and tools to fix it? There is nothing to do. It's a defective unit, you do the same thing as if you hadn't waited in line for 6 hours. You wait until new units come in and return yours. This is the problem with people buying into corporate hype over a product. I don't see anything wrong with waiting in line overnight, but don't start whining anymore when it breaks than if you just went to the store and picked one up on a whim. You are the one who couldn't WAIT to have the toy. You are essentially blaming Microsoft for infusing you with their hype over this shiny new toy. Be a little grown up about it and return it for a full refund and wait for other systems, or replace it when you can.
This is just the "spend spend spend" society hard at work. "Xbox360" comes out! OMG HAVE TO HAVE IT!!!111 I bought an original X-Box at the beginning of this summer. I've gotten my money's worth of entertainment and then some. The thing is how old? I'm careful with how I spend my money, and I'm patient about purchasing something. The end result is that I'm satisified with the product and I usually get my money's worth. This hype drivel is pushing people to buy as quick as they can and corporations to release the product as quick as they can. MORE MORE MORE!!! Once the hype goes away, the product stabilizes, the price goes down... and Joe Schmoes like me get one and have a good time with it. Sheesh. You kids and your toys.
You increase the potential for bloodflow (i.e. growing more veins), you reduce the blood pressure. You reduce the blood pressure, you put more strain on the heart to compensate for the lack of pressure. Of course health risks don't really seem to pose much of an impedance to those who would already be unnaturally modifying their body's ability for performance... so heck, go for it! I guess that'll keep the ER technicians employed and ready to go at the sidelines, warming up their "jump start" kits.
Why just a chunk of the moon? Blowing up the moon would be kind of like using chaff when being pursued by a heat seeking missile... many more fragments. If we have 20 years, let's just dedicate that time to stuffing the moon's core so full of WMDs that when the time comes, we'll get quite a show.
My other solution is to dig a hole through the Earth to allow the asteroid to pass through its natural trajectory. If we were clever enough, we could dig a hole in such a way that we could redirect the asteroid right into the moon.
Alright, alright... I'm really just sick of these damn dogs going nuts every month.
And maybe a "day", instead of meaning the rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun, means the rotation of the Universe relative to God? Because Earth wasn't "created" on the first day, so you'd have to use something else to measure a day... otherwise how would you know if it took a day if Earth didn't exist in order to measure a day?
That's just another idea of many that make Evolution and ID work just dandy together.
That's always been my "fusion" of ID and evolution, just for shits and giggles. I came up with the idea that the seven days it took God to create the earth and universe were really seven "universe" days instead of seven "earth" days. An earth day is characterized by a full rotation of the earth relative to the sun. So I would then say that a universe day is characterized by a full rotation of the universe relative to God. The light of the earth is the sun, the light of the universe is God (may sound hokey to some, but anyone who believes in God as an all-powerful entity will like the idea... I'm appealing to their psychology). Of course I haven't really researched into how exactly the universe rotates, because most of it seems to be theory, apparently no one can really agree whether or not it does (all of my information gotten in about five minutes by typing "universe rotation" on Google). But anyhow, the analogy is abstracted enough that it really doesn't matter too much how the universe rotates, just so long as it does and it takes a damn long time doing it... in order to fit into the billions of years of universe formation factuatheorythingymabopper.
Exactly. FOSS is community centric. There are no customers. Company/customer relationships are based around the dollar; I pay company, they give me something I want. The FOSS community is blurry. I request a feature in software, maybe I'll get it... maybe not. I am not paying them for the feature. If enough people want it, it happens. If enough people want it, chances are that a few of them will contribute towards getting that feature. If someone is constantly complaining about the current state of the project, and not taking any initiative, then they need to be put in their place (perhaps a little more maturely than the KOffice guy, using some detailed reasons as a rebuttal). Again, professionalism, but there is no gently catering to the user's whims. FOSS avoids the reality of the dollar and how you have to treat customers supporting you with the dollar. If a constantly whining and initiative-lacking member of the community finally gets fed up and leaves the community, the community is better off, even if what the member was whining about was significant.
I agree. Women of that age don't really have this need for a massive entertainment adrenaline rushing blowout. The types of games we males play are stressful, and why we willfully subject ourselves to that stress and intensity goes pretty deep into the male psyche. Not to say that women can't be just as aggresive, I always end up getting hurt playing soccer with my younger sisters. Girls just don't have that primal need to express aggression, dominance, and ego in video games. We're the product of evolution, it's in our blood... KILL KILL KILL, DESTROY, and PWN. I'm 23, working on my masters degree, being mr. academic, all that... but put me in a Halo 2 game with a bunch of 14-17 year olds and I'm back to jeering and pwning with the rest of them. I can't help it. Girls seem to be able to help it though, and therefore they don't need the rush and excitement... just something stimulating enough to make the game worth playing, none of this appeal to the mighty heroic save the earth slay the aliens type of character. Girls don't seem to have that complex. Lucky them, they save the hundreds of bucks we shell out on games that appeal to our psyche. Most guys I know are not the alpha male aggressive types, but you put them in a video game... and it all comes out, even if they're not shouting like monkeys, you can see the determination in the way they play. I haven't met many guys who simply didn't care whether they won or lost over an extended period of time. If you get beat on for long enough, your ego flares up and you want to get better so you can dish it out. Ego is a funny thing.
Add the so many million that Microsft lost on the X-Box, I know I cost Microsoft a cool $76 by only purchasing Halo 2 and a $10 copy of GTAIII with my X-Box.
Let's say the loss of $1.5B is wildly exaggerated because Microsoft began selling their unit for $150 at some point in time (I don't remember when). Well consoles bought at $150 lose $50, assuming their manufacturing process didn't get any cheaper. If all 15M consoles were bought at 15M, then that would make a loss of $750M.
Now, I've also heard that buying more than 10 games for your XBox will profit MS from the royalties or whatever such fees exist for developing on their platform. According to this survey, Only 50% of XBox unit owners purchased more than 10 games. Let's be statistically illogical and say this cuts their losses in half, now we're still at $375M.
This magically makes the profit of the XBox and Halo2 combined come out to -$125M. Now we have a reasonable profit goal for Peter Jackson to achieve with this movie. He can probably take a bigger nap than he did making King Kong. I actually saw the whole video documentary of Bryan Singer having to come in and direct for Peter Jackson 'cause he was napping on the couch. It was superb.
Google and Micrsoft in "The Big Lebowski".
Google: "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "A Multinational Corporation". You're a Multinational Corporation. I'm the Goog. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Googleness, or uh, Googler, or El Googlerino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."
Re:Why should you.. or anyone care?: Slave Mentali
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Let's presume you're talking about my God-Damned Penis.
...then crowing about how "GDP has gone up!!!11one" is simply a slave mentality...
Perhaps, but wouldn't you crow too? "GPD IS UP!!!111 TEH YAYNESS, ROFLLRZZZZZ"
If you've got a 35-hour workweek, 6 weeks of paid vacation every year, free healthcare, free schooling through Bachelor's-level for your kids, and a guaranteed old-age pension.... would you give it all up so you could live in a country that had a slightly higher GDP????
Yes!
Are you insane? What on god's green earth effect will a higher GDP have on your own personal life experience??
Oh now you're just being plain sarcastic aren't you?
Yeah, I forced myself to get used to the S-Type after I found out they weren't making the Duke anymore. I've never had a controller (the Duke) fit so nicely in my hands, and my fingers are probably a little shorter than average. I have more control with the analog sticks because of the weight and size of the controller.
No, that's not at all like an intervention. The final outcome of an intervention is decided by the person with the problem. Bad analogy. The goverment does not intervene and ask, "So, what do you want to do?"... the government asks if you want to obey or disobey the law and face the punishment for disobeying the law, in addition to the supposed inherent punishment from taking part in the act, which draws a major gap between alcohol/drug abuse and violent/sexually oriented video games (according to my official survey "Study Differentiating Between the Damage Done by Drug/Alcohol Abuse and Violent/Sexually Oriented Video Games", which is on display in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign saying, "Beware of the Leopard", at the Town Hall).
Think about it in terms of a spoken language. At the age of ten, most kids can speak well enough to express anything they want... how they feel, what they want, etc. They have complete freedom with the language; virtually no idea cannot be expressed with the vocabulary and rhetoric of a ten year old. Essentially what is being said is that a ten year old is on the same level as Hemingway or Dickens, because the kid, like these authors of immense literary genius, has the same freedom of language.
I'm only twenty-three, and I've been writing C/C++ code since I was in seventh grade... my biggest project so far has been in a team of three people and we put out maybe five or six thousand lines of code. I haven't had the necessity to delve into some of the lesser used aspects of C++, let alone the obscure. And I wouldn't dare call myself a master, or even a pro... I still see C++ code that makes my eyes cross for a few minutes. Five or six thousand lines of code to me is a good chunk, but probably chump change to any seasoned pro. I can still do anything I damn well please with the language... like the ten year old, but beyond that scope is being able to do anything I damn well please and do it well. That brings in a whole new level of ability to evolve... some of it language specifc, some of it simply a matter of being a good coder in general.
Code, like spoken language, is an expression of an idea. A language is created to express an idea, and in the professional world, immensely complex ideas. I learned why Python is so great in about thirty minutes and most of what Python can do in about two or three hours. But let's see how I fare against someone with a few years of experience in writing a simple program, say a client/server chat program. You'll see me stumble over my own ass more times than Jennifer Lopez.
It's true that the actual language is generally irrelevant to the idea. That's a moot point to this whole discussion though. When I speak or write, I don't think about the language; where I'm putting the nouns, my conjunctive whats'its, and God knows what else don't matter to me, it's mostly automated. Ask someone who doesn't write as well as me to write anywhere near my level (a ten year old for example), and they'll putter around for a bit... and it'll look awkward and forced. Ask me to write on Hemingway's level and I'll crank out maybe a crappy paragraph or two per week. The more I read of Hemingway, or any other seasoned author, the more I have no clue how they do what they do. The more complex ideas become, the more intracate the language used becomes. Little previously-unrecognized nuances can throw the whole idea down the shithole. Hemingway doesn't put an incredible amount of strained and wasted effort into his rhetoric, just like I don't, just like a ten year old doesn't. Each of us can express any idea, does this make us literary equals?
How will my code compare to one of the maintainers of the gnu C/C++ compilers.? That's the point of this whole thread right? The whole point of a CS degree in college isn't to teach you how to code, but the underlying ideas of coding in general, and hopefully the underlying ideas of that as well. A good undergraduate degree should leave you completely devirginized as to how anything digital functions, from basic circuitry to modular design. At least that's what I got out of mine. You don't get a Bachelor's or Master's degree to become a qualified expert... you do that in your job or Ph.D. program. You get the first degree(s) to become qualified to become an expert.
Agreed. The Matrix movies worked out because of the ridiculous amount of "creative" options in the general concept of the Matrix.
X = "Vampires", "Ghosties with Dreadlocks", "A Little Asian Guy Who Makes Keys"
WB1: "Lets put some X in the movie."
WB2: "How?"
WB1: "Because the machines made X so X could do Y."
or
X = "Flying", "Stopping Bullets", "Being A Little Spacey"
WB1: "Let's let Neo have X ability"
WB2: "Why?"
WB1: "Because then we can create mini-plot Y around ability X".
Basically each movie has some entirely new set of concepts to wow the pants off of you so that they don't have to worry so much about the intracacies of the previous movies. I loved the movies, and I love cheap thrills, and concepts that wow the pants off of me, and the newest FPS [graphics/physics/AI] w/o improved gameplay. I am 22, and a little ADD.
If the V comic book contains any intertwined complexities that aren't just based off of circumstance, then I worry that the WBs won't even be able to follow the comic book completely and just wow the pants off of me again. Of course movies generally turn out this way anyways. The Dune books are ridiculous for what I expect and can handle out of entertainment. I think they're the best things since sliced bread but I'll be damned at how many times I have to go back and work out my fact checking, and fact checking within fact checking within fact checking (plots within plots within plots;)).
Slashdot Mirror
Look up "Origen of Alexandria" and his thoughts on reincarnation. Reincarnation was only taken out of "Christianity" by popular vote around 500-600 A.D.. It's just religious politics. There are many contemporary resources that integrate the concept of reincarnation into Christianity.
Hmm, I just computed the Hoare triple for his program and found nothing wrong. What were you using as an invariant?
I had a friend in school who had been active in sports all of his life. He was, by his looks very fat. Funny though, he seemed to have very little fat on him. I remember hitting him while he was flexing his stomach... he had a Buddha belly, but it was hard as a rock. He worked out way more than I did, yet he always seemed "fatter" than me. It was just his build.
I have seen two Navy Seals to date who fit this physique. They look like Santa, but somehow they can run 10-15 miles with a full 60lb pack and not be any worse off for it, and they can do this consistently. I would keel over from vomiting at about 10 miles and no pack.
One of my martial arts teachers also has this body shape. He has a big belly, big limbs, and a round pudgy little face. Yet while everyone in the room is sweating and panting from exercises or drills, he shows no outside signs of exertion.
In addition to all the other fat factors, some people are just plain round... but probably aren't extremely fat.
A lot of the things I still love to do today that I did as a kid were because my parents were actively involved and interested. Chess was definitely one of those things. Chess is pleasant to play for me because I've been playing it since I was a kid and I have a lot of fond memories associated with it, a lot of which were/are with my dad.
Of course with a masters degree, taking 6 hours of classes is generally considered full time, and you need special permission to go about 12 or so. So we're talking about two full years. I'm taking nine hours right now, and it sure ain't the load nine hours in undergrad would be, sheesh! I took at least fifteen hours every semester in my undergraduate studies, and nine hours right now seems about the same work load.
Exactly, the system is screwed. I think the real basis for the screwy system is central to the word "hype". Corporations create it, people buy into it. A post further down the line states that normally, when something is bought and found defective, you return it, no big deal. But then he states that suing is justified when he waited six hours in line to get it and got the runaround from Microsoft. Well what is Microsoft going to do, mail you the parts and tools to fix it? There is nothing to do. It's a defective unit, you do the same thing as if you hadn't waited in line for 6 hours. You wait until new units come in and return yours. This is the problem with people buying into corporate hype over a product. I don't see anything wrong with waiting in line overnight, but don't start whining anymore when it breaks than if you just went to the store and picked one up on a whim. You are the one who couldn't WAIT to have the toy. You are essentially blaming Microsoft for infusing you with their hype over this shiny new toy. Be a little grown up about it and return it for a full refund and wait for other systems, or replace it when you can.
This is just the "spend spend spend" society hard at work. "Xbox360" comes out! OMG HAVE TO HAVE IT!!!111 I bought an original X-Box at the beginning of this summer. I've gotten my money's worth of entertainment and then some. The thing is how old? I'm careful with how I spend my money, and I'm patient about purchasing something. The end result is that I'm satisified with the product and I usually get my money's worth. This hype drivel is pushing people to buy as quick as they can and corporations to release the product as quick as they can. MORE MORE MORE!!! Once the hype goes away, the product stabilizes, the price goes down... and Joe Schmoes like me get one and have a good time with it. Sheesh. You kids and your toys.
You increase the potential for bloodflow (i.e. growing more veins), you reduce the blood pressure. You reduce the blood pressure, you put more strain on the heart to compensate for the lack of pressure. Of course health risks don't really seem to pose much of an impedance to those who would already be unnaturally modifying their body's ability for performance... so heck, go for it! I guess that'll keep the ER technicians employed and ready to go at the sidelines, warming up their "jump start" kits.
Why just a chunk of the moon? Blowing up the moon would be kind of like using chaff when being pursued by a heat seeking missile... many more fragments. If we have 20 years, let's just dedicate that time to stuffing the moon's core so full of WMDs that when the time comes, we'll get quite a show.
My other solution is to dig a hole through the Earth to allow the asteroid to pass through its natural trajectory. If we were clever enough, we could dig a hole in such a way that we could redirect the asteroid right into the moon.
Alright, alright... I'm really just sick of these damn dogs going nuts every month.
And maybe a "day", instead of meaning the rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun, means the rotation of the Universe relative to God? Because Earth wasn't "created" on the first day, so you'd have to use something else to measure a day... otherwise how would you know if it took a day if Earth didn't exist in order to measure a day?
That's just another idea of many that make Evolution and ID work just dandy together.
In the same way that Jesse Owens with a twisted ankle is faster than Fat Albert.
That's always been my "fusion" of ID and evolution, just for shits and giggles. I came up with the idea that the seven days it took God to create the earth and universe were really seven "universe" days instead of seven "earth" days. An earth day is characterized by a full rotation of the earth relative to the sun. So I would then say that a universe day is characterized by a full rotation of the universe relative to God. The light of the earth is the sun, the light of the universe is God (may sound hokey to some, but anyone who believes in God as an all-powerful entity will like the idea... I'm appealing to their psychology). Of course I haven't really researched into how exactly the universe rotates, because most of it seems to be theory, apparently no one can really agree whether or not it does (all of my information gotten in about five minutes by typing "universe rotation" on Google). But anyhow, the analogy is abstracted enough that it really doesn't matter too much how the universe rotates, just so long as it does and it takes a damn long time doing it... in order to fit into the billions of years of universe formation factuatheorythingymabopper.
"Uh, we're gonna need to move your desk downstairs into Storage B."
"No...I...I..."
"Uh, we have some new people coming in and we need all the space we can get."
"No...no...no...no...but...but...but...I, I, I"
"And if you could could go ahead and get a can of pesticide and take care of the roach problem we've been having that would be great."
"I can't...Excuse me. I believe you have my stapler?"
Exactly. FOSS is community centric. There are no customers. Company/customer relationships are based around the dollar; I pay company, they give me something I want. The FOSS community is blurry. I request a feature in software, maybe I'll get it... maybe not. I am not paying them for the feature. If enough people want it, it happens. If enough people want it, chances are that a few of them will contribute towards getting that feature. If someone is constantly complaining about the current state of the project, and not taking any initiative, then they need to be put in their place (perhaps a little more maturely than the KOffice guy, using some detailed reasons as a rebuttal). Again, professionalism, but there is no gently catering to the user's whims. FOSS avoids the reality of the dollar and how you have to treat customers supporting you with the dollar. If a constantly whining and initiative-lacking member of the community finally gets fed up and leaves the community, the community is better off, even if what the member was whining about was significant.
...He and Booger immediately started training to win their place as Delta Delta Deltas.
I agree. Women of that age don't really have this need for a massive entertainment adrenaline rushing blowout. The types of games we males play are stressful, and why we willfully subject ourselves to that stress and intensity goes pretty deep into the male psyche. Not to say that women can't be just as aggresive, I always end up getting hurt playing soccer with my younger sisters. Girls just don't have that primal need to express aggression, dominance, and ego in video games. We're the product of evolution, it's in our blood... KILL KILL KILL, DESTROY, and PWN. I'm 23, working on my masters degree, being mr. academic, all that... but put me in a Halo 2 game with a bunch of 14-17 year olds and I'm back to jeering and pwning with the rest of them. I can't help it. Girls seem to be able to help it though, and therefore they don't need the rush and excitement... just something stimulating enough to make the game worth playing, none of this appeal to the mighty heroic save the earth slay the aliens type of character. Girls don't seem to have that complex. Lucky them, they save the hundreds of bucks we shell out on games that appeal to our psyche. Most guys I know are not the alpha male aggressive types, but you put them in a video game... and it all comes out, even if they're not shouting like monkeys, you can see the determination in the way they play. I haven't met many guys who simply didn't care whether they won or lost over an extended period of time. If you get beat on for long enough, your ego flares up and you want to get better so you can dish it out. Ego is a funny thing.
Add the so many million that Microsft lost on the X-Box, I know I cost Microsoft a cool $76 by only purchasing Halo 2 and a $10 copy of GTAIII with my X-Box.
Profit loss per XBox: $100 per $199 console.
Units sold since 2001: Approx 15M.
Let's say the loss of $1.5B is wildly exaggerated because Microsoft began selling their unit for $150 at some point in time (I don't remember when). Well consoles bought at $150 lose $50, assuming their manufacturing process didn't get any cheaper. If all 15M consoles were bought at 15M, then that would make a loss of $750M.
Now, I've also heard that buying more than 10 games for your XBox will profit MS from the royalties or whatever such fees exist for developing on their platform. According to this survey, Only 50% of XBox unit owners purchased more than 10 games. Let's be statistically illogical and say this cuts their losses in half, now we're still at $375M.
This magically makes the profit of the XBox and Halo2 combined come out to -$125M. Now we have a reasonable profit goal for Peter Jackson to achieve with this movie. He can probably take a bigger nap than he did making King Kong. I actually saw the whole video documentary of Bryan Singer having to come in and direct for Peter Jackson 'cause he was napping on the couch. It was superb.
Either that or they still haven't figured out how to make tools for postural support.
Google and Micrsoft in "The Big Lebowski". Google: "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "A Multinational Corporation". You're a Multinational Corporation. I'm the Goog. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Googleness, or uh, Googler, or El Googlerino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."
Perhaps, but wouldn't you crow too? "GPD IS UP!!!111 TEH YAYNESS, ROFLLRZZZZZ"
Yes!
Oh now you're just being plain sarcastic aren't you?
That is the most wrong thing I think I've heard all week.
Reuters has no amperical evidence proving this story to be completely true. Wait, yeah they do.
Yeah, I forced myself to get used to the S-Type after I found out they weren't making the Duke anymore. I've never had a controller (the Duke) fit so nicely in my hands, and my fingers are probably a little shorter than average. I have more control with the analog sticks because of the weight and size of the controller.
No, that's not at all like an intervention. The final outcome of an intervention is decided by the person with the problem. Bad analogy. The goverment does not intervene and ask, "So, what do you want to do?"... the government asks if you want to obey or disobey the law and face the punishment for disobeying the law, in addition to the supposed inherent punishment from taking part in the act, which draws a major gap between alcohol/drug abuse and violent/sexually oriented video games (according to my official survey "Study Differentiating Between the Damage Done by Drug/Alcohol Abuse and Violent/Sexually Oriented Video Games", which is on display in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign saying, "Beware of the Leopard", at the Town Hall).
Think about it in terms of a spoken language. At the age of ten, most kids can speak well enough to express anything they want... how they feel, what they want, etc. They have complete freedom with the language; virtually no idea cannot be expressed with the vocabulary and rhetoric of a ten year old. Essentially what is being said is that a ten year old is on the same level as Hemingway or Dickens, because the kid, like these authors of immense literary genius, has the same freedom of language.
I'm only twenty-three, and I've been writing C/C++ code since I was in seventh grade... my biggest project so far has been in a team of three people and we put out maybe five or six thousand lines of code. I haven't had the necessity to delve into some of the lesser used aspects of C++, let alone the obscure. And I wouldn't dare call myself a master, or even a pro... I still see C++ code that makes my eyes cross for a few minutes. Five or six thousand lines of code to me is a good chunk, but probably chump change to any seasoned pro. I can still do anything I damn well please with the language... like the ten year old, but beyond that scope is being able to do anything I damn well please and do it well. That brings in a whole new level of ability to evolve... some of it language specifc, some of it simply a matter of being a good coder in general.
Code, like spoken language, is an expression of an idea. A language is created to express an idea, and in the professional world, immensely complex ideas. I learned why Python is so great in about thirty minutes and most of what Python can do in about two or three hours. But let's see how I fare against someone with a few years of experience in writing a simple program, say a client/server chat program. You'll see me stumble over my own ass more times than Jennifer Lopez.
It's true that the actual language is generally irrelevant to the idea. That's a moot point to this whole discussion though. When I speak or write, I don't think about the language; where I'm putting the nouns, my conjunctive whats'its, and God knows what else don't matter to me, it's mostly automated. Ask someone who doesn't write as well as me to write anywhere near my level (a ten year old for example), and they'll putter around for a bit... and it'll look awkward and forced. Ask me to write on Hemingway's level and I'll crank out maybe a crappy paragraph or two per week. The more I read of Hemingway, or any other seasoned author, the more I have no clue how they do what they do. The more complex ideas become, the more intracate the language used becomes. Little previously-unrecognized nuances can throw the whole idea down the shithole. Hemingway doesn't put an incredible amount of strained and wasted effort into his rhetoric, just like I don't, just like a ten year old doesn't. Each of us can express any idea, does this make us literary equals?
How will my code compare to one of the maintainers of the gnu C/C++ compilers.? That's the point of this whole thread right? The whole point of a CS degree in college isn't to teach you how to code, but the underlying ideas of coding in general, and hopefully the underlying ideas of that as well. A good undergraduate degree should leave you completely devirginized as to how anything digital functions, from basic circuitry to modular design. At least that's what I got out of mine. You don't get a Bachelor's or Master's degree to become a qualified expert... you do that in your job or Ph.D. program. You get the first degree(s) to become qualified to become an expert.
Just my two unprofessional pence though.
Agreed. The Matrix movies worked out because of the ridiculous amount of "creative" options in the general concept of the Matrix. X = "Vampires", "Ghosties with Dreadlocks", "A Little Asian Guy Who Makes Keys" WB1: "Lets put some X in the movie." WB2: "How?" WB1: "Because the machines made X so X could do Y." or X = "Flying", "Stopping Bullets", "Being A Little Spacey" WB1: "Let's let Neo have X ability" WB2: "Why?" WB1: "Because then we can create mini-plot Y around ability X". Basically each movie has some entirely new set of concepts to wow the pants off of you so that they don't have to worry so much about the intracacies of the previous movies. I loved the movies, and I love cheap thrills, and concepts that wow the pants off of me, and the newest FPS [graphics/physics/AI] w/o improved gameplay. I am 22, and a little ADD. If the V comic book contains any intertwined complexities that aren't just based off of circumstance, then I worry that the WBs won't even be able to follow the comic book completely and just wow the pants off of me again. Of course movies generally turn out this way anyways. The Dune books are ridiculous for what I expect and can handle out of entertainment. I think they're the best things since sliced bread but I'll be damned at how many times I have to go back and work out my fact checking, and fact checking within fact checking within fact checking (plots within plots within plots ;)).