Re: USB microscopes for very small SMT



John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 06 Dec 2008 11:12:12 -0600, Vladimir Vassilevsky
<antispam_bogus@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



They need a new language and a new discipline.

BASIC, Java, C# and ADA are there since quite long ago.
It is a mistake to think that a non-technical problem can be cured by technical means.


Banks still use COBOL.
Accounting types can program in COBOL, which is
really the point: a language that allows accountants to code
applications is a far better idea than trying to get a bored C++
programmer to understand accounting.

Certainly there are the specialized languages like Matlab, LabView etc. where the main idea is liberating the non-specialist from the minor technicalities. However 1) This can't prevent the mistakes in the algorithm 2) The downside is the tremendous overhead and the inflexibility.


The three best programmers I know
were *not* formally educated as programmers.

"There is no and there can't be any replacement for the intelligence, the experience, the common sense and the good taste" (B. Stroustrup)
One of the best circuit designers that I know is a medical colledge graduate with no formal EE education.

It would take a combination of a new language and a new culture to get
us past the mess that programming is today.

Oh, come on. Programs are no conceptually different from the stuff sold at Wallmart. A programmer is a blue collar job. "Better programming" is a synonim of "cheaper programming". As the nearest example, look at the lousy windows software used on Tek and LeCroy expensive (!) scopes.

A computing profession
that does everything carefully, on time, and bug-free would look
completely different from what's happening now.

Sure. Back in 70-x, they promised us that the true communism will be built in 20 years.

Good reads:

"Dreaming in Code", about a group of world-class programmers who spent
years working on a product that was mostly undefined.

Why would the world class programmer waste his precious time on something undefined?

"Showstopper!" about the coding of Windows NT.

"Road to the future" by Bill Gates of Microsoft
"Only paranoids survive" by Andrew Grove of Intel

VLV
.

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