Half a Century of Crappy Computing • Hacker News Board

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#11

Post by alextgordon » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 2:31 AM UTC

A less troll-y overview: http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm

I don't buy the argument that textual code is a remnant of our mathematical past and visual programming is the future. Surely our writing systems are just as text-based and yet, I don't see anyone proposing we supplant them with pictograms.

Aside from that, many problems are simply not suited to an event-based model, just as many problems are not suited to functional models and others are not suited to imperative models. There is not, and will never be, a one size fits all approach to development.

The reason software is so susceptible to errors is nothing to do with the model of its development, but rather that bugs can be "hidden" until the program is running, and commonly much longer after that. This is why you rarely get bugs in CSS, HTML or PNGs - the full results of modifications can be seen in near real time. When you do get bugs in HTML or CSS, they are browser issues or issues with resizing - things that are not immediately apparent.

Importantly, any programming environment sufficiently well equipped to be useful, will always have places to hide bugs. Event-based programming does nothing to address this, in fact I think it provide more bugs.

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#12

Post by Willie_Dynamite » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 2:51 AM UTC

Man, this is the first time I've stumbled on a netkook page that doesn't have huge blocks of 28 point times new roman and blue underlined text that isn't links.

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#13

Post by jwecker » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 2:54 AM UTC

This entry scores very high on the crackpot index ( http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html - replace some scientist notables with computer-science notables) and is generally just funny.

It did make me start to think though about one reason I enjoy computer science (or the engineering side more specifically) - it tends to be much easier to get traction on good ideas than many other fields. For the most part, good ideas in computer science are self-evident, and easily adopted by practitioners. Too easily sometimes- without enough scientific method being applied. Of all scientific fields, computer science would be the _last_ one I'd accuse of engendering blindness to obviously good ideas. A cadre of older programmers dictating to the younger generation how to think about programming? Seriously, lol (:

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#14

Post by adriand » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:05 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #9

miriam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/components.htm#Types

Still doesn't really help. What's the while loop actually doing? Where's the data being stored, and how do you get it out? Similarly for his quicksort example ( http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/quicksort.htm ) - from what I can see, there's no means to input or output whatever you're sorting - that part is all internal, and the only accessible parts are 'start' and 'done'.

I think you need to drag your understanding and drop it onto his concepts. You're far too bogged down with all of this "seeing". When are you people going to stop just seeing, and start truly knowing? Drag and drop your mind. It's the way of the future.

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#15

Post by donaq » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:08 AM UTC

Seriously, guys. Just flag it.

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#16

Post by VMG » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:25 AM UTC

Hey, I remember that guy from posting crazy comments on ESRs blog. He has got stome great stoff on "Artificial Intelligence From The Bible": http://www.rebelscience.org/Seven/bible.html

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#17

Post by miriam » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:39 AM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #11

A less troll-y overview: http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm I don't buy the argument that textual code is a remnant of our mathematical past and visual programming is the future. Surely our writing systems are just as text-based and yet, I don't see anyone proposing we supplant them with pictograms. Aside from that, many problems are simply not suited to an event-based model, just as many problems are not sui…

Well, you should read his recent posts on why Frederic Brooks's "No Silver Bullet" was wrong:

http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2010/02/reliable-software-p...

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#18

Post by jafl5272 » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:41 AM UTC

This guy is a crackpot. Everybody knows that Time Cube is the True Physics: http://www.timecube.com/

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#19

Post by rakslice » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:44 AM UTC

Mr. Sokal, is that you? ;)

Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

#20

Post by miriam » Wed, Mar 03, 2010, 3:49 AM UTC

jwecker wrote: post #13

This entry scores very high on the crackpot index ( http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html - replace some scientist notables with computer-science notables) and is generally just funny. It did make me start to think though about one reason I enjoy computer science (or the engineering side more specifically) - it tends to be much easier to get traction on good ideas than many other fields. For the most part, good…

Well, Savain would say, "If the Turing Computing Model is as awesome as computer scientists make it out to be, why doesn't it solve the parallel programming crisis?"