Xref: utzoo comp.std.misc:142 comp.realtime:119 comp.arch:10547 comp.os.misc:970 comp.misc:6511 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!ames!hc!lanl!opus!ted From: ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) Newsgroups: comp.std.misc,comp.realtime,comp.arch,comp.os.misc,comp.misc Subject: Re: TRON (a little long) Message-ID: Date: 7 Jul 89 22:48:31 GMT References: <252@arnor.UUCP> Sender: news@nmsu.edu Followup-To: comp.std.misc Organization: NMSU Computer Science Lines: 35 In-reply-to: uri@arnor.UUCP's message of 7 Jul 89 14:34:05 GMT X-Zippy: I am deeply CONCERNED and I want something GOOD for BREAKFAST! In article <252@arnor.UUCP> uri@arnor.UUCP (Uri Blumenthal) writes: Thanks, Tom. I can't help but to recommend you to read some books on CS, in my turn. It may enrich your lexicon with some "real" technical terms - so we'll not need to seek "technical" definition for UGLY. So be professional, please (I mean -even more (:-) - in CS, not in liberal arts... terms like ugly, good, elegant and so on do not indicate that the speaker is fuzzy minded even when applied to computer science. rather they indicate are reasonable appreciation of the role of heuristic decisions in the design and evaluation process. only toy problems (such as are given to people in text-books and in school) are really amenable to solutions purely on technical grounds. in the real world of design and engineering there are an enormous number of decisions that must be made long before the ultimate effect of those decisions can be known. in such situations, a good designer has a philosophy of design to fall back on that allows them to make decisions in what is essentially a vacuum of hard data. an honest designer will use qualitative, `non-technical' terms like ugly or elegant to describe decisions made on this basis. a dishonest or naive designer will deny the applicability of such terms to their field (not intended to be an ad hominem attack). it is also important to realize that for design to be a fulfilling life work for anybody but an automaton, you must allow some outlet for artistic impulses. creating a design that not only is functional, but is a work of art in some sense greatly feeling of creating something worthwhile. these `fuzzy' terms DO have an important place in all engineering and scientific disciplines. they function as guide-posts in the murk.