From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Virtual memory & paging In-Reply-To: <3C5E746A.A5EA4630@strakt.com> References: <20020204103944.36F5419A27@mail.cse.psu.edu> <3C5E746A.A5EA4630@strakt.com> From: Richard Maxwell Underwood Message-Id: Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 20:26:56 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6f383078-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 I loathe memorizing petty details like which drawer has the soap and whether a constructor has to be declared in a private or public section of an object definition. I detest software designs that have special cases or exceptions. I'm always cursing Microsoft -- they seem to design all their software by random accretion of features. What's particularly odd to me is the pride some people take in their mastery of clutter. It's especially true of techies -- they love to indulge in the memorization of mountains of meaningless minutiae. Indeed, I suspect that the pride they take in this pap influences the design: software tools are most successful when they create a priesthood knowledgeable in the arcane incantations required. Perhaps this is all for the best -- after all, society can't afford a high ratio of geniuses to grunts. Perhaps society has come up with the perfect means of profitably employing those moiling masses of mental midgets. They're not dullards -- they're specialists! They may not understand much, but they certainly have gotten all the details of c++, HTML, Java, perl, Windows 95, or JCL down pat. So I don't want to be too hard on the mentality. But you must ask yourself where you fit into the grand scheme of things. Are you one of those moiling mental midgets, or do you seek grander things for yourself? The truth is simple and obvious: you can only think clearly when you purge your mind of clutter. Any real-world decision is impinged upon by milliards of factors, but turns on only a few. The ability to slice through all the secondary factors and zero in on the crucial ones is central to good decision-making. -- Richard Maxwell Underwood The Internet Is Missing! http://www.satn.org/about/missinginternet.htm