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From: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C argument
Message-ID: <6866@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 90 12:06:24 GMT
References: <28621@usc> <1990Dec5.011038.12618@ariel.unm.edu>
Sender: news@uceng.UC.EDU
Organization: University of Cincinnati, Cin'ti., OH
Lines: 37

In article <1990Dec5.011038.12618@ariel.unm.edu> john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes:
>So are questions of the difficulty of learning the language (what, you
>are not up to date on the latest theories of high temperature supercondutivity!
>Where have you been, reading about programming languages? 

This is a severe problem. Every time I discover a new, potentially
useful tool (FORTRAN, C, LaTeX, UNIX, etc.), I find that I can't get
it to do a damned thing without a sustained full-time effort. First
one has to plow through the 600 page manual. Then one has to translate
one's problem into the new and unfamiliar ``paradigm''. When that goes
up in smoke, one has to iterate to remove all one's numerous 
misunderstandings about the new, non-intuitive system. This takes 
time and effort, which can only come at the expense of one's primary
career responsibilities. If those primary responsibilities are to
play games all day with neat computer toys, that's great. Unfortunately,
this isn't how most of the world happens to be set up.

Don't get me wrong; I remain enthusiastic about all this nifty stuff.
But a severe problem exists with all of it, namely, that the people
who develop computer tools have little or no concern for minimizing
the intellectual overhead that their inventions impose. This sends
a clear message of disdain to the users, i.e., "I don't care what you
happen to be thinking about most of the time. From now on, you are 
going to spend your time thinking about what I regard as worthy of
thought."

Sometimes I wonder if the computer revolution is nothing more than a
conspiracy to appropriate the entire intellectual capacity of the
industrial world? When I see M.D.'s pissing away their time trying to
get their Lotus graphics look pretty, I have to wonder.


--
Dan Mocsny				Snail:
Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu	Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171
	  dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu		University of Cincinnati
513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab)	Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171


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