Re: Is Information an Important Science?

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:06:16 -0400, in message
<Pine.NEB.4.63.0606271605080.18752@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Straydog
<asd@xxxxxxxxx> scribed:



On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, John Larkin wrote:

On 27 Jun 2006 11:51:03 -0700, "Ron Peterson" <ron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


John Larkin wrote:
On 26 Jun 2006 21:45:25 -0700, darwinist@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

- You can do science all day for decent money (eg programming).

Programming is science?

Programming (Computer Science) is a mixture of mathematics, science,
and engineering.


If it involved any serious amount of any of those, it wouldn't crash
so much.

John


Are you going to tell us that there is perfection in mathematics, no false
hypotheses/data in science, and all engineering is 100%
failsafe/foolproof?

Your inference is flawed. His statement, to me, is saying that if
programming involved any serious amount of mathematics, science, and
engineering, it wouldn't crash so much. "So much" being the phrase that
rules out your faulty inference of "100%" reliability. If you've ever
studied reliability, you'd know that there is no such thing as 100%
reliability.

John's implication is borne out by my experience. Programmers, especially
when using c (and its attendant variations), are free to put together heaps
of garbage that are sold to the consumer with nary a thought to quality or
robustness. Engineering projects, such as bridges, buildings, aircraft
design, etc, tend to stay up and in the air without falling down with
regularity (granting some rare but notable and spectacular failures). This
is because these projects are held to a higher standard of performance than
your typical Windows application. The bottom line in much programming is
to produce something that *looks like* it works, and makes money.

--

If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten,
and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing!
.

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