Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> As part of the drive to empty our house of useless crap, I was going
> through some of my old college work last night. Ah, the memories.
>
> ...but it was somewhat baffling to walk into a classroom
> and discover that I know more about the subject than the lecturer does.
Oh c'mon now!  Anyone who can think his way out of a wet paper bag has had this
experience repeatedly. We're just socially trained not to say so.

> ..."but comments are rather sparse". ...there's not a hell of a
> lot to comment on.
>
Been there squared. Sadly, MANY programming classes are taught by folks who
can't follow more than a few lines of simple code without a continuous running
series of comments telling them what they're reading.  Also, the catechism of

who want to be able to hire low-wage nitwits to make any code change they might
ever want.  One particularly irritating instructor actually FORBADE me to bring

grudge, however.  After my final grade was securely recorded, I gave him a very
nice going away present, a gift-wrapped box of Constant Comment tea.  ;-)

> And then there were the Quants lessons. ("Quantitative Methods") This,
> as best as I can tell from my lecture notes, was simply an orgy of
> mathematics. ...
Well, we can never have too many of those, can we?  I'm sure nearly all of us
have seen this, but here goes anyway:
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/humour/polynomial.html

> You cannot
> simply /tell/ me that (A + B)^2 = A^2 + 2AB + B^2. I have to know /why/
> this is true. ...
Bravo. I'm pretty sure that this attiude is a necessary condition for any
meaningful application of the term "sentient".

> ...DKJ came over and informed me that I had just
> invented differential calculus, and showed me the general formula for
> the derivative of any polynomial.
It's probably a very good thing that you delved into the foundations BEFORE
being exposed to Leibniz notation, which (IMHO) strongly tends to obscure rather
than illuminate underlying principles. (But, hey, /productivity/ is the ONLY
truly important reason for mathematics, right?)

> It still makes me chuckle that I enrolled for a computing diploma and I
> spent two terms learning how double-entry accounting works.
Historically, there are really only two significant primary sources on the true
nature of double-entry accounting. I'm referring to Houdini and Machiavelli, of
course.

>I have nobody to impress anymore. :'{
Why the ":'{" ?... Seriously.  Do you not grasp that THIS is truly ultimate
victory?

> (Although... I wonder how much of the praise I received was actually
> justified. ...
In a very real sense, the answer is "none" for you, me and all of our kind. I
really do understand just how difficult it can be to break our addiction to
praise, but unless we pull that particularly nasty little monkey off our backs
and stomp on it, they'll always own us.

> Go on, admit it. You thought this was going to be about SRAM vs DRAM,
> didn't you? :-P
Not for one second... I considered the source,  ;-)


Best Regards, /*  Closing   */
Mike C.       /*  Signature */

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