Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!ptsfa!l5!laura From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: Scientific Computing and mips Message-ID: <72@l5.uucp> Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 07:16:43 EDT Article-I.D.: l5.72 Posted: Fri Sep 6 07:16:43 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 16:22:02 EDT References: <419@kontron.UUCP> <2300001@uicsl> <1093@ames.UUCP> <1119@ames.UUCP> <1573@peora.UUCP> Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco Lines: 54 > Ah, guys there is more than one way to parse: >> One problem with computer science is that we have poor empirical and >> laboratory skills and tools. [Eugene Miya] One of them is ``you guys are all slugs for not using proper laboratory skills and tools, and if your professors didn't teach you them then they are all slugs too'' which appears to be the way some people have taken this. This is not what I read, though. What I got was ``there is an inadequate set of laboratory skills and tools designed for computer science, and so we make do, which isn't optimal''. The problem with having a real good hammer is that you think that all the world is a nail [anybody know the source of this quote?]. Is a Whetstone a particularily good tool to evaluate vertical migration software? Is it a particularilty good tool to measure the performace of vnews? Take vnews as a particular example. You want to give it the best user interface possible for both experienced and novice users, some of which have access to mice or other pointing devices, but most of which do not. What do you have? A research problem. While a lot more is known about user interfaces now than before, we still don't know enough. Okay, what basic underlying data structure should you use to represent all the news? Another research problem. What language should we write it in? Another research problem. Can I write a prototype first? Ooops, now we have a political problem. Management says yes and then ships the prototype. You never get to do a rewrite and you have to support the prototype. Pretty soon you give up prototyping... Which algorithms are best suited to this task? What is the best way to think about programming in order to come up with the best programs? How can I tell that algorithm A is going to be better than algorithm B without building a prototype? And, once the program is written -- how to tell which parts need a complete rewrite? I think that these are all hard questions which everybody faces and mostly solves by experience and personal opinion. I think that we are doing better in discovering what makes a programmer more productive, but a lot of these things (say UNIX and bitmapped workstations) are simply not available to most programmers. -- Laura Creighton (note new address!) sun!l5!laura (that is ell-five, not fifteen) l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa