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

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

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).

> >> > 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).

> > 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".

> > 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.

> >> 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).

> > 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.

> "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?

> 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.

> 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?



Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia