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"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguy com> wrote in message
news:47f931ae$1@news.povray.org...
>
> The disdain that "real" programmers feel for newbies who crank out quick
> code using "toy" languages is, I think, more akin to the disdain "real"
> mathematicians feel towards business math majors. Sure, they can "press
> the buttons", but they don't really know what they're doing. It's not
> about jealousy - after all, many programmers who started out writing
> assembly code are now using higher level languages and cranking out code
> just as quickly. It's about perceived understanding of what your code
> actually does.
Agreed.
What bugs me no end is that some people don't want to learn. They're not
interested in understanding what the code does. They just want to get
something 'working' (for certain definitions of working) as fast as
possible.
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>> The C-hacker will have a very strong prejudice against higher-level
>> programming paradigms and languages.
>
> I would add "they tend to call things 'bondage and discipline
> languages'", even if they're relatively low level. :-)
Oh yeah, I've seen that one...
Premature optimisation is a Bad Thing.
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Gail Shaw wrote:
> What bugs me no end is that some people don't want to learn. They're not
> interested in understanding what the code does. They just want to get
> something 'working' (for certain definitions of working) as fast as
> possible.
Well, some people have a "real job" to do, and a computer is just a tool
to them.
OTOH, these people should *not* be developing nontrivial code. Of any
description! That should be left to genuine experts... [And if *they*
have an attitude of not wanting to learn... I'm sorry, there really is
no excuse.]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> ["So you see, the derivative of a Nth order polynomial is a polynomial
>> of order N-1. And that means - ooo, I wonder if dolphins can hear in
>> stereo?"]
>
> Well, can they?
...WTF? How would *I* know!
>> Now, if only I knew the magical incantation. [You know, the one that
>> makes her go from "ok, I'm sitting here with a bunch of people
>> chatting" to "hey, that boy is cute. I should make out with him..."]
>
> BTW I am not sure if you have already past your 'cute' date
NNOOOOOOOO!!!! >_<
Damn it, I'm glad I read this *after* the trip. :'(
> You might try to go for 'interesting'.
> I think that is much safer. And you do have some unique features.
Ah. Is *that* the polite term for "you're freakin' weird, dude"?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DatingIsHarderThanProgramming
>
> Thanks for that. That's way funny.
Agreed.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Chambers wrote:
> Generally, you should cut about 2/3 of your first draft, no matter how
> good it is. Whatever fluff you come up with on the first write, you
> have better stuff inside your head waiting for the second draft.
Right. Gotcha.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> That's what always killed me about mathematical proofs. They always
> start with all the details, and finally tell you why you care. :-)
Ooo... you know, I never thought of it like that.
I started reading a book on "Special Functions". Chapter 1 is about the
Euler Gamma function. It goes into some pretty extreme calculus straight
away, but I still haven't figured out what the hell the Gamma function
is actually "for"...
> That's what is killing me about reading the Erlang documentation: there
> are all sorts of cross-references, and no obvious place to start
> reading. I wouldn't be surprised if there are circular references
> throughout, either.
The Oracle documentation is rather like that. There is no obvious place
to start reading from. No matter what you read, it's littered with terms
that haven't been defined yet.
This strikes me as bad documentation, frankly...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Quite amazingly, this seems to be so even in academic circles. Well,
>> at least here.
>
> Yah. And I've found most marketing people, many of whose jobs it is to
> write, have little or no grasp of simple things like sentence construction.
>
> It just takes lots of practice and correction. I was fortunate to go to
> a grade school (as in, first through 12th grade) where they actually
> hammered on you ever single week to get you to improve. You started with
> "here's a topic, take it home, and bring back a one-page essay about it
> next week." It ended with "take a seat, here's your topic, you have 20
> minutes for a 2-page-with-outline essay discussing the topic."
I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
If you're doing university assignments or projects, there's no
requirement for iteration - you *should* hone your writing carefully,
but most people pull all-nighters and never read it all the way through.
> I think the Ph.D. stuff (at least in the USA) is much more about
> reading, writing, and presenting than it is about the actual field of
> research. Maybe places like MIT teach you more technical stuff in the
> PhD degree than the Masters degree, but that isn't the case in any of
> the places where I or my friends went.
This is where the honing comes in. When a PhD supervisor should be
making you start writing at least a year before you submit, then making
you revise your thesis almost continuously, you should bloody well end
up better at writing than when you started out.
Also, when you write academic papers in collaboration, the other authors
should be proofreading the whole document and giving complete feedback -
after all, their names are on it too, so any sloppy writing on the first
author's part reflects badly on them.
(IME at least, there's a good balance between writing and content here
in the UK.)
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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
> work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
> If you're doing university assignments or projects, there's no
> requirement for iteration - you *should* hone your writing carefully,
> but most people pull all-nighters and never read it all the way through.
Heh. If I had a dollar for every report or user manual started 20
minutes before the final submission date... ;-)
> This is where the honing comes in. When a PhD supervisor should be
> making you start writing at least a year before you submit, then making
> you revise your thesis almost continuously, you should bloody well end
> up better at writing than when you started out.
>
> Also, when you write academic papers in collaboration, the other authors
> should be proofreading the whole document and giving complete feedback -
> after all, their names are on it too, so any sloppy writing on the first
> author's part reflects badly on them.
>
> (IME at least, there's a good balance between writing and content here
> in the UK.)
My mum seriously wanted me to do a PhD. Because, I mean, 6 years in
every year of my degree, my grades became lower and lower. Fortunately I
hit graduation before I started failing modules. Thus, a PhD is
obviously the correct next step - especially given my pathologically
weak writing skills.
What. The. Hell.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I think much of the problem is that people don't seem to re-read their
> work much, so they never realise what rubbish they wrote the first time.
I have learned to reread everything I write. I reread all my news posts
before I send them (well, at least if they are longer than a few lines).
Sometimes I spend more time re-editing and fine-tuning the text than
I spent writing it for the first time... :P
--
- Warp
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