On Monday, July 17, 2017 at 10:14:00 PM UTC+5:30, Rhodri James wrote: > On 17/07/17 05:10, Rustom Mody wrote: > > Hint1: Ask your grandmother whether unicode's notion of character makes > > sense. > > Ask 10 gmas from 10 language-L's > > Hint2: When in doubt gma usually is right > > "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and > wrong." (H.L. Mencken).
Great men galore with great quotes galore² Here are 3 — take your pick: Einstein: If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself. [Commonly attributed to Einstein More likely Feynman, Rutherford, de Broglie or some other notable physicist https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8742/did-einstein-say-if-you-cant-explain-it-simply-you-dont-understand-it-well-en ] Dijkstra: Programming languages belong to the problem set, not (as some imagine) to the solution set https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD473.html Joseph Weizenbaum — AI pioneer, author of Eliza: Computer technology, like all sciences, are self-validating systems. They define problems and their solutions within a circumscribed context and leave out much of the real-world data. “Science can only proceed by simplifying reality.” [Weizenbaum then recounts] a joke about a drunkard to clarify this statement: One dark evening a policeman comes across a man on his hands and knees searching beneath a lamppost. He asks the man what he’s doing and the man replies that he lost his keys over there, pointing off into the darkness. “So why are you looking for them under the streetlight?” inquired the policeman. The man replies, “Because the light is so much better over here.” http://www.digitalathena.com/the-wisdom-of-joseph-weizenbaum.html > Unfortunately grandmothers outside their areas of expertise are particularly > prone to finding those answers. Gma for the purposes of this discussion can be defined: - A (not necessarily) elderly person who - Is fairly intelligent - Not necessarily highly educated - Generally interested in life and people - [But not usually] in technical arcana An alternative "definition to gma" (if big names are a requirement) could be Joseph Weizenbaum quoted above, who in Computer Power and Human Reason vociferously spoke against the propensity to define human value in terms of "computerizability" -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
