Re: future computers (sorta OT)

[Greg Alexander <galexand@xxxxxxx>]

>At 12:57 AM 6/22/00 -0500, Greg Alexander wrote:
<snip>
>>         I vaguely suspect something like this is happening in aviation --
>>at any rate aviation would be a great place to look for where computing
>>needs to be used in a similar environment to star trek [though it's often
>>not very futuristic].  The airplane doesn't have a processor and memory
>>and i/o circuits, it, it has a little black box with a few clearly-
>>labelled connectors.
>
>
>I work in aerospace. We have the worst of all possible worlds.
>
>Too much complexity. And change is very difficult.

I was more refering to the fact that the black box works and even fairly
skilled workers never look inside.  The role of the software engineer is
invisible to everyone except him and his immediate superior.  Those
servicing the aircraft, even the smart ones, only care about the inputs
and outputs on these boxes, they don't need to think about program code or
any of that.  You have to think about program code, but you're presumably
not actually servicing the things.  It's like the studs in the wall: the
builder could think "this is a horrible wall, there are only studs every 5
feet" or he could even think "this is a horrible wall, nothing's at a
right angle and all the nails are in wrong" but I will look at the wall
and think "It is a fine wall, it is still standing."  That type of
hiding is what the future holds, I suspect.  In Windows you cannot hide
the machine from the user yet.  In FORTH we don't want to hide the machine
from the user -- rather, we'd like the machine to be such that the user
won't scream when he sees it.  I guess it's a little like the open
building approach of not putting interior walls on the beams, just having
the bare beams exposed -- if the beams are neat enough and there's not
insulation hanging all over it can produce a very attractive building.

>We don't solve the problem with better thinking. We just throw  more
>resources at it. ( 200K a year contractors are the norm in the business
>these days. Because you need to be awfully smart to do something this
>stupid)

Is this something everyone's seen?  The more into the "real world" I get I
see that most programmers are not only stupid but really quite capable.
I'm amazed at the problems they'll solve while at the same time surprised
that they don't just say "no way man!"  I still haven't coded up a proper
regex matcher just because I haven't thought of a good way to do it, but
every new job I get I see a mass of badly-designed code and I'm simply
shocked that someone could be so brilliant as to force such a horrible
mess into working (while so stupid to write such a bad mess in the first
place).  I think this is something they don't teach in academia. :)
	What I fear most about moving into the "real world" is dumbass
coworkers.