Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> Ah, no theory can be proved, it can be only disproved. So yes one can
>> only believe that a particular theory is true. But that is not science.
>> It is philosophy.
> 
> Well, yes, clear separation of science from philosophy is a nesessary
> prerequisite of Luckism. Perhaps Ph.D degrees in appropriate domains
> should be renamed to Sc.D (or Sc.Ex - scientific expert).

exorcist sounds better (:-))

>> >> > At least one major technical issue is relevant - it is anticipated
>> >> > lifecycle for a product.
>> >>
>> >> ... only if that is shorter than the "lifecycle" of a manager.
>> > 
>> > So the problem is that too many managers prefer *own* short lifecycles,
>> > that is, they are oriented to frequent change of their job.
>>
>> The problem is that the system rewards this.
> 
> So we turn to the system and immediately recognize themselves in dangerous
> proximity to revolutionaries (because even naming the system is
> identifying it as external object, which is certainly at least a kind of
> hesery for well-intentioned member of society).

Nope, revolutionaries want to change the system (quickly and bruttaly). I am
just an observer.

>> > Luckism is a good cover for various calculated clandestine actions.
>>
>> The hidden parameter theory? (:-)) I am on Bohr's side!
> 
> So you must be a regular subscriber to the "Journal of Irreproducible
> Results".

I am a MSDN subscriber.

>> > Hm, it seems that you have too much contacts with managers - that you
>> > phrase sounds too familiar -;) .
>>
>> Yes I do. This is why I have no illusions. (:-()
> 
> You have an illusion that you have no illusions. Having passed this stage
> long ago I can tell you that this isn't even meta-illusion - it is just
> one of regular illusions... well. slightly more sophisticated than average
> one. Nothing wrong in that. though - an illusion is just a sort of
> viewpoint, and as such it may be instrumental.

So it is even worse. Or you mean that even managers will be saved? (:-))

>> >> UNIX was a great set-back in OS architecture, design and ideology.
>>
>> [... blaming good OSes for "having no curly brackets" ...]
> 
> Not at all, I did not blame those good OSes for anything. I just stated
> that they (except Multics for which I can't say anything definite) were
> dispatcher-oriented rather than tools-oriented and thus favored system
> administrators vs. users. I do not consider that a blame, because those
> preferences were good those times and they adequately reflected the needs
> of programmer's community (and I'm not in position to blame those OSes for
> their preferences particularly because those times I was no less a senior
> system administrator than an application programmer, and it was one of my
> responsibilities to organize and control batch- and teleprocessing for
> several IBM-clone mainframes and PDP-11 clones).

I do not know what is a tool-oriented OS. Tools are application programs
they are not a part of the OS. OSes twenty years ago were multitasking and
multiuser. They were highly reliable and efficient with respect of memory
and CPU use. They were parallel. They had virtual memory and time sharing.
They provided virtual machines. They had highly integrated IDE and
debuggers. They were networking. They were stable for DoS attacks of all
sorts. What new gave UNIX and Windows to us in recent 20 years, except for
awk and viruses?

>> > that will perform better for the same user base. So I think that in
>> > your above (quoted) sentence the word "disaster" should be related to
>> > "spreading" but not to "Windows". that is, the catastrophe you
>> > mentioned is the fact of access of millions of users to computers, and
>> > not a particular OS that provided that access.
>>
>> Isn't it a Marxist's way to blame innocent people for their inability to
>> work with our "excellent" software?
> 
> Well, I don't know about Marxist's way in computing (which class holds a
> progressive role?), but I saw those innocent people enough - both as a
> system administrator (there I saw innocent programmers) and as an
> application programmer (there I saw both innocent suppliers and innocent
> end users of information). Those innocent people were often too stupid,
> easily lying and sometimes even intentionally damaging cables. They could
> somehow participate in a productive job only under a kind of iron rule -
> executing by either their managers or by system administration team. But
> for PCs you have neither the head of department immediately behind your
> shoulder nor a system administrator closely monitoring your resources and
> your potentially damaging actions. All you have there is the OS, which
> can't take into account most of specific intrications of your personality.

Come on, I never heard of PC users chewing cables. And do not tell me that
PC users are responsible for viruses and spam.

>> "How they dare open E-mail attachments!
>> Any PC-user shall have a license for using it. Let's educate them,
>> better, grow a new Windows-man!"
> 
> Do you think that this is an end-user OS issue and not an Internet issue?

This is one issue. Internet is as good as OSes involved let it to be. What
is the difference between an attachment and a stack of punched cards you
used to feed to an OS-370 machine 30 years ago? Did it crash the system?

>> it is vasting enormous resources for nothing.
> 
> For nothing? You are really joking. That enormous progress in hardware
> (including dramatic decrease of prices) was certainly impossible without
> providing OSes for those innocent people, with which they can run their
> beloved applications - Word, Excel, typesetting etc., etc - more or less
> succesfully.

Is a man running Word the goal of evolution?

>> It is real, physical
>> catastrophes yet to come as more and more things become controlled by
>> software.
> 
> Certainly. Software will prevent some catastrophes and create others. Just
> as any other widespread and powerful technology. So what?

It is absolutely uncontrolled.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de