POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Tell me it isn't so! : Re: Tell me it isn't so! Server Time
10 Oct 2024 15:17:00 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Tell me it isn't so!  
From: Darren New
Date: 26 Jul 2009 12:13:27
Message: <4a6c80a7$1@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> Ah - here come people who have a precise *definition* of words like
> "fundamentally" and "difficult" :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

http://www.lips.utexas.edu/ee382c-15005/Readings/Readings1/05-Broo87.pdf


"""
The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: 
data sets, relationships among data items, algorithms, and invocations of 
functions. This essence is abstract in that such a conceptual construct is 
the same under many different representations. It is nonetheless highly 
precise and richly detailed.

I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, 
design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of 
representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation. We still 
make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared with the 
conceptual errors in most systems.
"""

"Fundamental" means basic or essential.
"Difficult" means requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or 
comprehend.

So, yeah. If you actually study this stuff, you realize why programming 
(amongst many other fields of endeavor) is fundamentally difficult.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."


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