On Tue, 2012-02-28 at 12:06 +0200, [email protected] wrote:
> Naturally, LaTeX is not some click-it tool, it's a powerful and flexible
> tool, and so it must be learned. Which is work, and that's not well-taken
> in the shiny Web 2.0 world, so... the digital natives can't do it. They
> have learned to use the things that are easy to use and they've learned to
> demand easy tools and easy information snippets, but the majority of them
> has no real concept of what's underneath all the infrastructure.
>
> My pretty consistent experience is that the closer you get to where
> information is actually produced or where work is actually done, the less
> fancy the tools are on the outside. Case in point - we're writing on a
> mailing list here which is technology from 20 years ago - but it does the
> job well...
>
> So, I prefer to do my studies 'the old way'. Not because I would be averse
> to technology or unable to learn anything new (after all, I did learn to
> use GLSL just by reverse-engineering shaders others have written and by
> trial and error when I felt I needed it), but because I understand 'the
> new way' all too well and have concluded that replacing the somehwat
> uncomfortable real thing with the confortable illusion of it is not a good
> idea.
This was just the end of a long and detailed discourse about learning and
writing and thinking. I believe I can take that as a short summary -
pinpoint pretty well our different views. I assure
you I have read the complete discourse several times -- but even now I
am not sure where there is my standing between the "digital natives",
the "scientists" or "experts" or "scholars" or whatever
During all my "productive" life I was just a hard working guy being
payed for developing new things that should find a market-place and/or
find solutions for problems popping up in the real, technical, mostly
computer oriented, very competitive, engineering world. So please
forgive me, if I sometimes talk a little "bluntly" when trying to make a
point.
Actually I wonder a little why you accept using a modern tool like LaTeX
being just 20 years old - while we all learned that the optimum
scholar-environment was developed by the old Greeks (to my knowledge
without any computers and/or LaTeX) -- after that we never had such a
development of basic wisdom as during that time! So actually we should do
like them: 1 Prof, 2 Students, and walking and talking and thinking and...
Well - (to some extend) that was meant as a joke - but seriously: Did
you ever consider how fast the environment changes today - for every
human being in any kind of doing? And how fast the tools change that you
can use to develop and deploy new ideas or to evaluate the basics?
~50 years ago: I was a Student and was not even allowed to use a "hand-held
calculator" - my Profs insisted on using "slide-rulers" and they checked
that we calculated with a deviation better then 10% (but definitely
bigger 1% - or you raised suspicion of cheating!).
~40 years ago: I joined into the BIG (blue)-Computer-World
("System/360") and had to input my "ingenious inventions" by punching
little carbon cards --> hand-carry those in boxes to the
Data-Processing-Center --> and retrieve them the next morning with many
many meters of Chain-Printer output.
~30 years ago: PCs and DOS (1981) became available for "personal use" -
and printers learned to print "condensed" and "enlarged" --> wonderful:
We could define headers and comments! (in March 1981 I bought an "Apple
II" for 3.130,-$ and enjoyed learning to write an own "word-program" in
Microcode).
~25 years ago: We entered the wonderful world of "MS-Word" (first
release 1983) -- parallel to that also began the wonderful world of
Post-Script printers! i.e. first time you could print something worth
being read! But it also produced quit some headaches because of
drivers, money, knowledge, incompatibilities, etc.!
~20 years ago: Those wonderful PDF-files were introduced - we now could
even transfer documents from one PC to another - even with different
Operating Systems and/or different printer capabilities! That was also
when LaTeX was developed - for high quality and quantity printing. (And
according to Wikipedia: "LaTeX is widely used in academia").
also 1991 Linux had it's first appearance
etc.
Believe me: I do understand that someone does not want to change his tools
every couple of years - just about nobody wants to do that and really
nobody needs to -- unless he is in a competitive environment! For sure
FGFS is not depending on market shares - but somewhere inside I
guess every developers would like to be "better than the others"!
Can you really imagine the existence of the FGFS over a longer
time-frame without all the new communication and development tools that
were implemented in recent years and will continue to change rapidly -
even after LaTeX? Should we, as a worldwide distributed engineering team
not always consider new developments? Those new tools will not have any
effect onto the "contents" of any dispute about e.g. "Egyptian myth" and
similar! Except that you can do that now with modern tools with every
"scientist" worldwide in real time!
I hope I could convince you, that there may be a difference between the
"scientific thinking" and the tools to use for distributing it.
So far my reasoning on the technical aspects -
but there is also a reasoning based on what you do for what:
- I would not ask kids (let us say below 10) to research in the Internet
- but to my knowledge schools start doing that already in the 5th grade
or so! I even heard of computers in a kindergarten!!
- surely students (and masters) have to read many "since years proven
hardcopy documents" to learn or review the basics
- a prof may be proud of his big library of books (but surely also will
use the Internet from time to time to look up something "minor")
- but does (e.g.) a Housewife really need to learn all theoretical
basics about e.g. plastics, metal, porcelain - just to cook?
- and does every kid need to know everything about aerodynamic-theories,
FAA rules, etc. etc. just to play with the FGFS? (And learn by doing!).
- is there anybody who really knows every detail about the world of
computer-hardware/architecture for which he designs a program or
application? (There is nobody in the world anymore who can predict the
flow of a bit inside a modern computer - I still had to find those with
an Oscilloscope, in those ancient times - about 40 years ago!)
My understanding of a "Handbook", "Manual", "Reference" or similar is:
Guide a beginner (may he be 10 years or 70, may he be a "scientists" or
just a kid) to be able to use the FGFS as a "toy" for playing, and show
him how he could learn more and more about it -- if he wants to. That
may not be the original idea of FGFS - but that way the kid may even come
to a point where he is able to simulate close to reality and has learned a
lot - without ever having mad a Masters-Degree!
And I am sure that is one of the attractions for many engineers spending
their free time for developing FGFS further and further! And surely they
are hoping that users will not stay for all times on version 1 - but
install and use the new developments - even if they will never understand
why those 3D-clouds look that fantastic on their screen!
I hope I did not insult anybody -- and hope the remarks about "digital
natives" and "scientists" are not meant in a way someone could believe!
rgds joe
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