Maybe I'm just old, but I still think wearing headphones conveys a detached air. My reaction isn't as strong as the 1981 interview, but it's there. Anyone else feel that way?
An excellent summary. Trying to get everyone in China to speak Mandarin would be like getting everyone in Europe to speak English. It will never be 100% unless you obliterate other languages.
Well argued, by far the clearest rebuttal I've read so far and I concede. I just hope that the rules of thumb they listed for "good science" are prioritized as listed, because I really believe content should be the key consideration.
Yes it does, but that doesn't make their arguments valid. My whole point is not to keep experts out, but to judge the content on its scientific merit alone.
To clarify. The bullet points are listed under "Marks of Good Science". Holding a degree does not mean your publications or claims are good science. It's fine if Ted wants to only have degree holders as speakers, but they should be clear that it's a bias they've chosen, not "good science".
Along the same vein: "The proposed speaker works for a university and/or has a phD or other bona fide high level scientific qualification". Many of the points they list are valid, but this conspicuous appeal to authority makes me much less inclined to watch the talks.
Does anyone else think that this article is a Satire? I think it's actually an appeal to common sense. What I read is the author is sad that programming is not moving in the direction of an emergent engineering discipline, sad that popularity, not reason, drives the acceptance of languages.
More people need to do this. It seems that among adults, the most effective message you can send is "goodbye". Sad, but, in my experience, true. Even then, some people will never learn.
The ironic thing to me is that in order to enforce the idea of an Internet Bill of Rights, you have to throw anonymity out the window. How do you defend an anonymous user in court?
It's not a bad idea, but how do we defend the anonymous users?
Do you actually believe that he's being honest? Sounds like he's puffing up to try and discourage them. When you're up against people who bring you into the legal ring, it might be a bad idea to show them that you're penniless.
I have my own ideas about how to do this, and I'm glad someone is moving in this direction, but I must ask, is this a stepping stone in a grander vision? Enemies of software development today are:
1. Code Comprehension: Can new people quickly understand a complex code base enough to implement significant features.
2. Fault Diagnosis: When is the last time you spent less than 50% of a project's time on debugging?
3. Code Transformation: Have you ever actually tried to factor a mega-function into separate functions? How about creating a set of concrete classes when you realize that your hierarchy abstraction breaks down under new requirements. Now do all that without introducing new bugs.
These are the hard problems, and it excites me that people are thinking about how to solve them. This tool will not solve all those problems, and maybe one tool shouldn't, but nevertheless I hope people will start thinking about the entire development process and how to improve all the tools of our industry.