Shuttleworth On Mir: "A Fantastic Piece of Engineering"

[Hamish Wilson]

And you sir are the one with the narrow worldview trying to force everything into fitting into your little math box, this may be news to you but not everything can or will fit in there. You think if people just do the math that things turn out perfect. Except the problem is that it doesn't and so the models involved have to be tweaked or even thrown out entirely and recreated from scratch. Sometimes people die as a result of an error in the model. I can understand that you don't quite get linguistics but I've already tried to explain to you how this all works and you've simply ignored it to try to push your math.

If I understand what you are saying correctly, you are saying that mathematical models do not always correlate to reality. Which is of course true in the sense that human created models may not include all of the real world factors at play. I think the debate here arises from the fact your words could also be interpreted as saying that the math itself can be flawed, which is clearly not the case, as two plus two always equals four (in base 10). I think we can all agree that it is the human component that is the potential failure point, and I will agree with your claim that is where the need for engineering comes in.

[Hamish Wilson]

Why are you so eager to rip everybody a new one...?

I do not think it is fair to point that question to any one person on this forum.

[Luke_Wolf]

If I understand what you are saying correctly, you are saying that mathematical models do not always correlate to reality. Which is of course true in the sense that human created models may not include all of the real world factors at play. I think the debate here arises from the fact your words could also be interpreted as saying that the math itself can be flawed, which is clearly not the case, as two plus two always equals four (in base 10). I think we can all agree that it is the human component that is the potential failure point, and I will agree with your claim that is where the need for engineering comes in.

If you would take a look back here http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...ext-quot/page6 that's not really the issue, the point of contention is that he is arguing software engineering isn't engineering on the basis that software is buggy and not delivered on time and such, and that math somehow answers all these problems and he keeps trying to point to this idiotic fallacy:

?Ask a mechanical, structural, or electrical engineer how far they would get without a heavy reliance on a firm mathematical foundation, and they will tell you, ?not far.? Yet so-called software engineers often practice their art with little or no idea of the mathematical underpinnings of what they are doing. And then we wonder why software is notorious for being delivered late and full of bugs, while other engineers routinely deliver finished bridges, automobiles, electrical appliances, etc., on time and with only minor defects. This book sets out to redress this imbalance. Members of my advanced development team at Adobe who took the course based on the same material all benefited greatly from the time invested. It may appear as a highly technical text intended only for computer scientists, but it should be required reading for all practicing software engineers.?

Anyone with any knowledge of the history of any field of engineering knows the above statement is utter bullshit. Bridge, automobile, and electrical engineers are all where they are today because they are standing upon the shoulders of people who figured it out before them who are standing on the rubble of the previous engineers mistakes. This is the fundamental reality of all fields of engineering where they can just pop something out on time with minor defects.

and then he continues this delusion by trying to push the idea that engineers get new fields right 100% of the time because Math.. He even goes so far as to try to use Space Travel as an example... which just no.

Also my secondary point is that that 2+2=4 is language with base 10 as the dialect, and that objects form the basis for language of any form be it english, math, or C++. As a result OOP is simply a recognition of the underlying way language works and is applying how we use english or math to programming, and he fails to even comprehend that math or the sub-models thereof are object oriented, and it's a fundamental concept whether he or other "mathematicians" recognize this truth or not.

[Hamish Wilson]

If you would take a look back here http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...ext-quot/page6 that's not really the issue, the point of contention is that he is arguing software engineering isn't engineering on the basis that software is buggy and not delivered on time and such, and that math somehow answers all these problems and he keeps trying to point to this idiotic fallacy:

Not the original source of contention, but my conclusion is what I got from the likes of your dark matter analogy, and with regards to your criticisms of pure mathematical models in of themselves.

[Luke_Wolf]

Not the original source of contention, but my conclusion is what I got from the likes of your dark matter analogy, and with regards to your criticisms of pure mathematical models in of themselves.

Well true, Although my worldview is that there is pure information (such as the cardinality that two objects put with two objects makes four objects) and then we have models with which we express such things as 2+2=4, and I'm sure you've seen tricks in math where people will break the model and they get things like 1=0 which obviously aren't true and don't agree with the pure information. Because of that I consider cardinality and math to separate and math to be purely a model, because we're always fundamentally working with the model instead of the information itself. That is unless you're purely using the objects themselves instead of traditional mathematics...

[Sergio]

If you would take a look back here http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...ext-quot/page6 that's not really the issue, the point of contention is that he is arguing software engineering isn't engineering on the basis that software is buggy and not delivered on time and such, and that math somehow answers all these problems and he keeps trying to point to this idiotic fallacy:

Your reasoning is idiotic; your analogies are idiotic; your examples are fundamentally idiotic, broken and pointless.
What I argue is that mathematics are at the foundations of programming, while you think that a stupid and contingent technique like OOP are the true foundations to it. It is such a narrow view of an intellectual discipline that I'm sorry you can't open your mind to really grasp the fundamentals.

Anyone with any knowledge of the history of any field of engineering knows the above statement is utter bullshit. Bridge, automobile, and electrical engineers are all where they are today because they are standing upon the shoulders of people who figured it out before them who are standing on the rubble of the previous engineers mistakes. This is the fundamental reality of all fields of engineering where they can just pop something out on time with minor defects.

So mathematics is not at the core of every engineering field... Please, I want to know just how much more stupid you can be.

and then he continues this delusion by trying to push the idea that engineers get new fields right 100% of the time because Math.. He even goes so far as to try to use Space Travel as an example... which just no.

Please, oh, PLEASE! go to NASA and ask what is more important to them for programming, if stupid OOP technique or mathematics that ensure them that the fscking thing won't explode killing men on board.

Also my secondary point is that that 2+2=4 is language with base 10 as the dialect, and that objects form the basis for language of any form be it english, math, or C++. As a result OOP is simply a recognition of the underlying way language works and is applying how we use english or math to programming, and he fails to even comprehend that math or the sub-models thereof are object oriented, and it's a fundamental concept whether he or other "mathematicians" recognize this truth or not.

You don't know what mathematics is; stop pretending you do, because you DON'T. Again, you DON'T KNOW what mathematics is.
You propose object-orientation is at the core of mathematics, language, etc? Now who is in a delusion?

[JanC]

Mir wasn't exactly a satellite...

A satellite of Earth is an object that is in an orbit around Earth.

There are 2 types of satellites: natural (like the Moon) and artificial (launched into orbit by humans). So Mir clearly was an artificial satellite...

[Luke_Wolf]

Your reasoning is idiotic; your analogies are idiotic; your examples are fundamentally idiotic, broken and pointless.
What I argue is that mathematics are at the foundations of programming, while you think that a stupid and contingent technique like OOP are the true foundations to it. It is such a narrow view of an intellectual discipline that I'm sorry you can't open your mind to really grasp the fundamentals.

Uhuh so since you have no real arguments against my analogies, or against my examples, or even against my reasoning you write your entire response ad-hominem not even trying to make a logic based appeal since I showed that you have no idea how the development process actually works.

So mathematics is not at the core of every engineering field... Please, I want to know just how much more stupid you can be.

That's right mathematics is a tool used by every engineering field when needed but the core is the shoulders of other people and the rubble those people stand upon.

Please, oh, PLEASE! go to NASA and ask what is more important to them for programming, if stupid OOP technique or mathematics that ensure them that the fscking thing won't explode killing men on board.

Hey guess what their mathematics is modeling real things and how they work so you just lost.

You don't know what mathematics is; stop pretending you do, because you DON'T. Again, you DON'T KNOW what mathematics is.
You propose object-orientation is at the core of mathematics, language, etc? Now who is in a delusion?

I said so and I showed it to be the case, and you have not put forward even one logic based appeal on the matter, simple ad-hominem attacks and a few appeals to authority. I don't mind ad-hominem but at least try to mix in some, even if it's just one, logic based arguments.

[JanC]

• Counting from the creation of Assembly in 1949 Programming as we know it is 64 years old
• Counting from the creation of C in in 1972 Modern languages have been around for 51 years
• Counting from the creation of C++ in 1983 and ratification in 1998 Object Oriented Programming has been around for 30 years and usable for 15

(yes one can argue to dating to other languages besides the assembly one but the ultimate point is that Software engineering is an extremely young field)

Actually, the first high level language (much higher level than C—but then again, before C there was already COBOL, LISP, FORTRAN, etc.) was designed in the first half of the 1940s (so even before you situated assembly!): Plankalk?l.

And the first theoretical science (math) about programming dates back to the 18th century IIRC.

But I agree that even 2-3 centuries still makes software engineering a very young field.

BTW: OOP has been around and usable for at least as long as C: both C & Smalltalk started life around 1969 and were officially released in 1972. No need to wait another decade until 1983 for that. And of course there were the programming language Simula (1967) and the program Sketchpad (1963, used OOP techniques) before that.

[Luke_Wolf]

Actually, the first high level language (much higher level than C—but then again, before C there was already COBOL, LISP, FORTRAN, etc.) was designed in the first half of the 1940s (so even before you situated assembly!): Plankalk?l.

And the first theoretical science (math) about programming dates back to the 18th century IIRC.

But I agree that even 2-3 centuries still makes software engineering a very young field.

Well I don't count mechanical computers or using machine code directly into programming as we know it personally, and interesting... books on programming languages always make it out as though assembly was the first abstraction off of machine code so I just went along with that assumption. Bookmarked for future reference.

I knew going into that statement though knowing that other languages would be argued for, however the ultimate goal was to point out the eras and highlight how short a time modern programming has been around to get to the point that the youth of the field is the main reason behind software being buggy and late, because as a field we aren't yet at a point where for 90% of problems we can just take a pre-existing model and modify it to our needs. Instead we've got to spend a lot of time and planning to build up beyond what's provided by toolkits.

Edit: ah I see why... it was designed and written about but no compiler was set up for it before 1998.... so that kinda doesn't count