A Summary Of Sorts
Posted by Daniel Lyons Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:41:00 GMT
I want to enumerate a few things I’ve been thinking about, in no particular order, just to share them with you.
- I want to encourage everyone to read Alan Carter’s essays, because I think this is extremely relevant to all programming, particularly his dichotomy between focussed attention and juxtapositional thinking and how the human brain and organizations build up around these concepts.
- I am quite passionately studying Dijkstra and I am very interested in two of his concepts from On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science, namely the radical novelty and the follies of operational reasoning and anthropomorphism.
- There are a number of dichotomies I’m interested in lately. One of them is false, the “software engineer” versus “programmer.” I am interested in whether or not the others are really the same relationship in different terms, or different aspects of the same relationship, or wholly separate. Namely, operational reasoning versus non-operational semantics (Dijkstra), focussed attention versus juxtapositional thinking (Carter), conceptual integrity (Brooks) versus local consistency (Carter), and generally simplicity versus elegance (nobody in particular).
- I am also interested in a few neglected media, among which I include the blog entry. Quality over quantity. I think my writing, while better than average for a blog, isn’t very good for an essay, and I think it’s time I start collecting my thoughts more solidly so I don’t lose track of what I’m trying to say before I say it. I also think I have some interesting things to say about programming, finally.
- For having such a poor liberal arts background, I am coming to see a literary appreciation for things as drastically underestimated. Code must be seen as linguistic expression, as literature. I believe, as of tonight, that I should also embark on a literary study of math. I think the way forward for me at this point is to learn more math, semantics and philosophy.
Once again I do not feel like I have gotten everything out but at least it is a starting place. I am thinking very seriously about going back through my blog posts and culling the good stuff for essay material. It’s becoming ridiculous to try and write an essay in one pass with no plan.
