Re: [tlug] Fortran --> Python (was linux engineer)

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 11:48:33 +0200
Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com> wrote:

> 2012/6/7 Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>:
> 
> > Hence, i would expect anyone who is working in field F and uses tool T
> > should try to understand how T works, even though it originates in
> > a completely unrelated field U.
> 
> I use the subway to get to work. Should I understand how electric
> trains work? Signalling? Tunnel construction?

No, but i expect you to know how to buy a ticket, how to figure out
how much a ticket costs, how to figure out on which track the train
goes and how to get on and off the train.

Most people i know use the computer in a way that is equivalent of
1) put a large silvery and a large coper coin without hole in the box
at the wall. Press the button that lights up.
2) take that thingy that comes out of the box
3) walk to the slim boxes overthere, and put that thingy into it as you
walk across them
4) go down the stairs on the left
5) wait for a box full of people to apear
6) get into that box yourself
7) wait until the box stops for the third time
8) leave the box
9) walk the stairs up

That's the way how joe average would be using the subway to get from
Shijuku to Shubuya if he'd be using the subway the same way as he'd
be using a computer. No understand what those coins are, or that thingy
he gets out of the box at the wall. And no way of telling what he had
to do if you wanted to go to Ueno instead. That would be actually a
completely new and unrelated set of instruction that would be need
to learn indepenently with great effort.

I don't expect anyone to know how a computer works internally (unless
he needs that knowledge for what he does) but knowing how their tools
work and what they are doing with those tools is necessary and not
just "expert knowledge" IMHO.
 
> Where does the recursion end?

When the stack overflows. ;-)

			Attila Kinali

-- 
It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All 
the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no 
use without that foundation.
                 -- Miss Matheson, The Diamond Age, Neil Stephenson