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From: mat@mtx5a.UUCP (m.terribile)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Titles
Message-ID: <1228@mtx5a.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 02:39:19 EST
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Posted: Wed Mar  5 02:39:19 1986
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> 	The energy to solve problems is present in most people, but
> at varying levels.  The energy to solve problems with a computer
> is present in few people, but at varying levels.  This energy must
> brought under control for it to be useful, the means by which we
> do that will be argued for a very long time.

I gotta agree.  When I went to Engineering school, Freshman Physics was the
student-breaker:

	[Come-into-my-Parlour-smile]
	``Gentlemen, I would like to welcome all of you to your first
	course in Physics.  Those of you who have had Physics in High
	School, please raise your hands . . . . . . To those of you with
	your hands raised, I would ESPECIALLY like to welcome you
	[suppressed grin] to your first course in physics.''

The point of the course was to teach you that you have to learn to THINK --
that is you must learn to think Physics.  Everything you think you know is
wrong in such a discipline.  I went through it again, with less success, in
electromagnetic theory, and in relativistic physics.

	But in maturing from the Apple ][+ hotshot to the professional
programmer/engineer (NOT the same as an engineer whose taught himself
how to program!)  your thinking has to evolve again.  Exposure to a few
vastly different languages helps -- try doing a Roman Numeral multiplication
program in Lisp, in Pascal, and in SnobolIV, one after the other.  So does
a few months spent enhancing some piece of code that is supposed to be
mysterious but is really just a masterwork (for me, a derivative of the
Ritchie compiler -- truly the Hamlet of programming)  Coming to grips with
the Right Questions To Ask ... or to have the answers for before asking ...
is not a quick thing.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	mtx5b!mat
					(Please mail to mtx5b!mat, NOT mtx5a!
						mat, or to mtx5a!mtx5b!mat)
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