Oh, how far we HAVEN'T come!

Oh, how far we HAVEN'T come!

[David McClain]

I just received the latest copy of IEEE Computer Magazine - I had to double
check that it was this month's issue and not April! The very back article
about the "profession" was written by Neville Holmes, U. of Tasmania. It is
embarrasing to the point that I hesitate to offer that I am a member of the
IEEE Computer Society.

He starts off alright by talking about the difficulty of producing correct
code in the absense of type checking and syntax error reporting (my
interpretation, not his), and then by the third paragraph when he states
"Much could be done to help programmers avoid such coding errors.", he
totally looses me to the point of anger!

He is concerned about coding conventions such as how to abbreviate
identifiers, and how to match up enclosing braces, and placement of
semicolons....

What an opportunity lost to the ML community. Is this all the further we
have managed to come?

Totally Pissed!!!!

- D.McClain, Sr. Scientist, Raytheon Missile Systems Co.,  Tucson, AZ

Re: Oh, how far we HAVEN'T come!

[John Max Skaller]

David McClain wrote:
> 
> I just received the latest copy of IEEE Computer Magazine 
..
> What an opportunity lost to the ML community. Is this all the further we
> have managed to come?

	Even sadder (IMHO): while working in a university,
I was told most of the (computer science) academics believed that
most of the theoretical problems of computing were solved, and the
main issues were human ones. Of course, human issues of computing
cannot be belittled ... but we're surely far from having even
a cursory understanding of the mathematics of computing.

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850
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