Jerry Stuckle wrote:
On 10/27/2013 10:33 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Jerry Stuckle wrote:
And also not to weigh in (much) about what's actually important about
OOP (Alan Kay has more than once pointed out that it's message passing
and isolation that are important, polymorphism and inheritance are
just
what seem to get the attention.) By the way: really nice
discussion of
the "state of OOP" at
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/johnson-armstrong-oop
(on a completely un-related matter, I happened to be looking at Erlang
from an OO perspective and stumbled across this rather nice interview
with Rolph Johnson and Joe Armstrong - of "Design Patterns" and Erlang
fame, respectively).
That is Alan Kay's opinion, nothing more, nothing less. Others
consider inheritance and polymorphism to be quite important. But then
those are people who have actually used polymorphism and inheritance
effectively.
But then such is the opinion of another academic who has had no (or
very little) real-world business experience.
Hmm... so the INVENTOR of object oriented programming is not an expert?
Won the ACM Turing award. That sort of thing.
He was not the "INVENTOR of object oriented programming". He is only
one of many who contributed to the concept.
He is widely credited for both creating the term and as the "father of
object oriented programming" - pretty much first instantiated in Smalltalk.
He won the ACM Turing Award "For pioneering many of the ideas at the
root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, leading the
team that developed Smalltalk, and for fundamental contributions to
personal computing."
Note that the notion of "software objects" is usually associated with
the Simula Team.
Academics get paid to write papers. Business people get paid to do
work.
Sounds like your idea of an expert is some grunt who wrote financial
software for mainframes. Mine is more like people who push the state of
the art, and those who get hired to help make big decisions.
My idea of an expert is one who gets paid for doing the work. They are
not "grunts" - and I'll bet most of your "experts" would fail in the
real world. I would love to see them working in a 200+ person-year
project, i.e. 50+ programmers working together for 2+ years.
Oh, you mean a team with incredible amounts of top-down breakdown of
work down to individual modules written by code monkeys?
Let's see, I believe I included Jerry Saltzer as an o/s expert. Well, in
addition to being a team leader on Multics, he was the author of RUNOFF,
the predecessor of pretty much all typesetting programs - and one of the
primary contributors to PC/IP (first TCP/IP stack for the IBM PC) and
Kerberos.
But, let's see - by your definition Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
would not be the pre-eminent experts on Unix (even though they wrote
it), and Dennis Ritchie would not be the preeminent expert on C (even
though he wrote it). After all, they weren't working on huge
programming projects, and Bell Labs was kind of "academic." And Linus
Torvalds wouldn't be an expert in Linux.
Or what about Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn - they authored TCP/IP, and pretty
much made the Internet happen - but they were academics at the time, so
that doesn't count?
What about Donald Knuth - only the world's pre-eminent expert on
algorithms. What, he doesn't count? After all, he's just an academic.
Doesn't count that "The Art of Computer Programming" is to programming
what the CRC handbook is to math.
I might also point out that most of those writing financial software are
buiding it on top of Oracle, or SAP, or PeopleSoft or some other fairly
complicated platform. Now the folks who wrote Oracle are certainly
experts in database technology. Writing forms and reports on top of
Oracle, on the other hand, is not rocket science.
Jerry Stuckle wrote:
And no, I did NOT refer to "reading a few pages on wikipedia and
writing a little php". I do not consider either to be reliable.
Rather, I referred to recognized experts in the field such as Booch,
Rumbaugh and Stroustrup.
Kind of flip-flopping to cite "recognized experts" after dismissing
guys
like Donovan, Saltzer and Corbato as "But they never were that highly
regarded except in academia" - when discussing operating systems and
systems programming.
Yes, all academics who have never (AFAIK) done any business
programming.
You sure don't know Donovan - he was pretty much the goto guy for
executive suite consulting in IT. Cambridge Technology Group was (may
still be) the go to MIS consulting firm - Donovan made a mint.
Not really. A few C-level executives would hire them, mainly to cover
their butts. But not IT departments, where the real work is done.
Says you, based on what?
On the more general side - if I'm interested in operating systems, guys
who do "business programming" are not where I'd look for expertise. I'd
look for guys who built large time sharing systems.
Changing the subject again?
No. I was pointing to your dismissing Saltzer, Donovan, and Corbato in
a discussion on operating systems. I wouldn't look to guys who do
"business programming" as experts in language design or process
methodology either.
Your personal level of ignorace is pretty staggering - you really don't
seem to have any credibility for deciding who is and isn't an expert.
Ah, once again the personal attacks. OK, here's one for YOU. You
obviously are no more than another academic, trying to justify your
position in a world where you are shunned by people who do the real work.
Never worked in academia in my life. Highest degree is a B.Sc. Designed
and built systems. Started and ran a couple of small companies. Worked
on a few rather significant systems over the years (Kurzweill Reading
Machine, Defense Data Network). Worked in some of the best engineering
groups in the world (at BBN and Sanders) - working on HARD problems (not
financial crap). Wrote and published a couple of definitive books
(based on real work) - and at the time could claim to be a leading
expert on their subjects (Internet in public libraries, telecom.
networks and policy for local government) - but too stale to claim any
current expertise. These days get paid very good money as a systems
architect for Intelligent Transportation Systems.
I don't need to justify my position, I get paid quite well for it -
doing real work. And my c.v. (and some of my publications) are readily
available for all to see - including descriptions of the projects I've
contributed to. (As compared to, say, one Jerry Stuckle, who seems to
have no visible credentials, publications, or anything else to lend any
credibility to anything he has to say.)
I also recognize my limitations. I've done some interesting work, made
some reasonable contributions to the field - but.... while I know some
of them, worked with some of them, and aspire to be as knowledgeable and
accomplished as some of them - I don't claim to be in the ranks of those
that I would consider to be pioneers and experts in Computer Science and
Engineering.
What I don't tolerate well are blowhards who make definitive statements,
many of them wrong, back them up with handwaiving about "the experts,"
without any citations - and then have the temerity to dismiss anyone who
disagrees, and dismiss any real experts as "academics" or "haven't
written business software."
I'm not sure why I bother - after all, as the saying goes "don't try to
teach a pig to sing, it only frustrates the pig and wastes your time" -
maybe for the benefit of others who might be tempated to take your
comments and advice seriously.
And then to cite Booch, Rumbaugh and Stroustrup re. OO programming
(ok,
Stroustrup wrote C++) - but if you want to cite experts - how about
Dahl
and Nygaard (Simula, pretty much invented software objects) and
Alan Kay
(Smalltalk, pretty much invented OOP). Maybe Joe Armstrong
(Erlang) for
a countervailing view.
Booch and Rumbaugh also were real world programmers, not just
academics. Separately they created OO design patters which were later
merged into UML - the most commonly used design pattern today.
Well.. perhaps the most talked about.
And the most commonly used - which you would know if you did any
real-world programming.
Used when one has to produce paperwork to support Government contracts.
UML wasn't around during my days at Sanders or BBN (or before that in a
couple of small firms) - so didn't see it then.
More recently, haven't seen any at my last four gigs:
MAK Technologies (software components for large military trainers and
simulators)
Traverse Technologies (large GIS based application systems)
Protocol Technologies Group, LLC (my own firm, R&D for the Army)
Clever Devices (current firm, makes ITS software for transit systems in
places like NYC, Chicago)
Now in those positions, I was doing system sales, and architecture work,
not coding - but I was on top of what we were selling, and what our
developers were doing - and
I didn't see UML except where required in a proposal or required
document to the customer. Informal diagrams on whiteboards, lots of
pseudo-code, but not much UML. Admittedly a small sample, though larger
when you consider our customer bases and component vendors as well.
I also haven't seen a lot of UML in technical product documentation
either. (I still do a lot of systems adminstration and evaluate/support
a lot of stuff - mostly for some servers left over from a previous
hosting business, that I now use to host some non-profits on a pro-bono
basis.)
Looks pretty, makes money for consultants and tool vendors, might even
be useful (IMHO, most software documentation is crap), but I haven't
seen a lot of it. Your mileage may vary.
Others are academics.
And BTW, it isn't limited to programming where the business world
thinks little of academics. It goes for many professions.
But you're too caught up in your own little world to even try to
understand REAL experts. Your mantra is "I have my mind made up and
no one will change it".
Sounds more like you're describing yourself, Jerry.
First, you've got to understand who the "real experts" are, rather
than
finding ones who simply backstop your pre-defined opinion (and..
experts
are nothing without citations). Beyond that, why is it that you
always
seem to draw from narrow confines of IBM (or, where Booch and
Rumbaugh
are concerned, Rational, now part of IBM). IBM is an important
part of
the computing universe, no contest; but the field, and it's leading
edge, are much broader than just IBM.
Miles Fidelman
Sure. Real experts have real experience in the field, using the tools
to write real programs. They get paid to do things which make the
company money. They don't just sit around and write papers and maybe
teach a class now and then.
I would love to see some of your "experts" in a real-world business
environment. My bet is they would all fall flat on their faces.
An awful lot of the academics I know have also started quite successful
high tech firms (or joined academica after retiring from same). (Granted
that MIT and Harvard professors aren't run-of-the mill academics).
Nope, I agree they aren't run-of-the-mill academics. Most businesses
would not hire them as programmers, for instance. I have yet to see
any of them working in real world situations. "Starting high tech
firms" or "retiring from same" is not "doing the work".
No, most business would NOT hire them as programmers - they couldn't
afford them. They send really large amounts of money their way to fund
research groups that they direct (though most of the guys I've cited are
retired at this point).
But then, anybody other than Jerry Stuckle obviously doesn't know
anything, about anything, and can't perform "real work" (defined
narrowly as coding financial applications).
I'd still like to see something from you that indicates that you
actually know anything, have accomplished anything in your career, or
otherwise are worth paying any attention to - other than out of morbid
curiousity.
Meanwhile, I have real work sitting on my desk, that I've been trying to
avoid - that I have to get back to.
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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