> If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the decision making part of the job for humans.
The key part is that, much like what humanity got from washing machines, automating some parts of the process is enough to have substantial savings in both cost and turnaround time, which also reflects in cost.
> If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the decision making part of the job for humans.
I'm not sure this "all or nothing" train of thought makes sense. Shipping containers were a terribly simple solution that covered only a very specific aspect of a logistic chain but it was enough to revolutionize international trade. Washing machines only focus on one specific task but they revolutionize economical and even social aspects of society. Heck, a crane only lifts weights up or down but it radically simplifies operations to the point of being indispensable.
Why should the value added by a brick-laying robot be any different?
> The Dr. Seuss books are an example of intentional book banning on political grounds.
No, it really isn't. When a book edition goes out of print that does not mean it's banned. If the editor decides not to invest in a re-edit ion that does not mean it's banned. If you go to a book store and it doesn't have a book that does not mean it's banned. If you go to a library and it doesn't have a book in its inventory that does not mean it's banned.
If you lack arguments, please don't fabricate lies and misrepresentations like that. That only makes you look dishonest and desperate to grasp to an argument that even yourself acknowledge has no basis nor merit.
If you're a real person and not a bot, you would be doing yourself a favour by stepping away from the keyboard, tar a break, and thing about what you're writing and how it looks.
>>That's an artificial construct designed to promote science and the useful arts, but in this situation it's being used to suppress art.
Do you honestly believe you're "suppressing art" if you fail to force the rightful owners if said art to go against their own will and instead follow your orders and desires on what others should do with what's rightfully theirs?
It sounds an awful lot like your are not as much interested in anyone's freedom as you're interested in imposing your personal will into everyone around you.
> I keep running into CMake based things not being portable, and being broken. And pretty much every single time cmake fails, it does not have ANY log AT ALL of what it did, and why it thinks libfoo is not there.
> I will never understand how a group looked at overly-complex Makefiles, determined it was hard to write complex build scripts, and concluded: "I should write a Makefile meta-language that can generate these."
If that's your personal experience then it seems you do not have any relevant experience at all developing and maintaining software projects, specially if they need to be cross-platform and cross-tech stack.
For example, it's clear to anyone with any basic experience that providing an abstraction over C++ compiler's so that you can ensure your C++ project can and does build successfully regardless of C++ standard, compiler make and model, and eve os and os distribution is extremely valuable.
Can you show me a Makefile that handles that?
With Cmake you get the exact same C++ project building flawlessly on macOS with Xcode and clang, windows with any version of MS Visual Studio, and of course any linux distribution.
You just download the project, run Cmake to generate a makefile, and build
How do you expect to even run a Makefile the same on all those combinations?
There are very good reasons why Cmake is the de facto standard.
> Humility is good, but it's important to acknowledge that CMake very often feels awful.
Those times coincide with projects that fail to follow the "modern Cmake" style, based on build targets instead of pretending Cmake is a scripting language.
Keep in mind that modern Cmake style is a thing since the release of Cmake 3.0, which was what? A decade ago?
If developers who don't know better end up writing messy unmaintainable code, their code is an unmaintainable mess. That's not a result of their tech stack, but their own work.
> From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners.
I don't agree at all. The "normal" university experience is designed around the assumption that the student is not familiar with the subject, and thus they specify a path comprised of a combination of lessons and assignments that allows everyone to get up to speed on a topic and share a common base level of all the fundamentals at a given stage.
The OP's comments mention nothing of the sort. They show that, even though the student lacked some fundamentals, the preliminary work already had covered most of the topics.
Thus OP's story is one mostly about getting a certification instead of actually learning something new. It involves learning stuff at their own pace instead of being forced to ramp um on a time budget with hard constraints on where the acceptable speed of growth must be.
We should not confuse the two, and we should certainly not mistake being able to pass a certification as a reflexion of intelligence or capability. The challenge of getting from cluelessness to have a solid command of the fundamentals of a topic in less than 4 months is incomparably higher than just casually cruising on a topic for 10 years.
The key part is that, much like what humanity got from washing machines, automating some parts of the process is enough to have substantial savings in both cost and turnaround time, which also reflects in cost.
> If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the decision making part of the job for humans.
I'm not sure this "all or nothing" train of thought makes sense. Shipping containers were a terribly simple solution that covered only a very specific aspect of a logistic chain but it was enough to revolutionize international trade. Washing machines only focus on one specific task but they revolutionize economical and even social aspects of society. Heck, a crane only lifts weights up or down but it radically simplifies operations to the point of being indispensable.
Why should the value added by a brick-laying robot be any different?