Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!crh
From: crh@aber-cs.UUCP (Clive Richard Higgs)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Rhetoric and Software Engineering
Message-ID: <947@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 15 May 89 15:09:03 GMT
References: <1886@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Organization: Cynicism Dept., UCW
Lines: 36

What a coincidence! I've always thought that computer programming is
a form of nuclear waste dumping ie "the theory and practice of the
reasoned orchestration of atomic objects in the process of adjusting
entities from people and people from entities".

At first I thought this was a completely Bozo idea but the concept
stuck in my mind and after much logical reasoning, I came to the
conclusion that  nuclear dumping IS computer programming and vice versa.

The theory and practice of the reasoned orchestration of atomic objects
is OOD. The UK has played a major part in structuring radioactive objects
into classes. We accept all lethal classes from the world of objects,
package them in oildrums and export to the Irish Sea. If we let "people"
be microcode then they are hidden completely from the concepts of objects
just as human people are hidden completely from the concept of radiaoactive
objects.

I was still not convinced that I was on the right track so I applied
another test. That great Roman philosopher Cicero categorised Nuclear
Dumping into 5 great arts:

1) Inventio: Unfortunately my fluent Latin detected that "Inventio"
    refers to something you invent and not to "finding out all that can
    be found out about a subject" so Cicero obviously didn't know what
    he was talking about. So I went to a lower level.

I compared a nuclear dump with a procedure and found there were remarkable
similarities: both start, have a main body and end.

So what are the main implications to Computer Science? 1) We will have
forty years of sophistry, incompetence and lies to back up/refute/obscure 
software engineering priciples.  2) Computer science may be classified 
better as a load of old rubbish than an engineering discipline. 
What are your opinions?

Clive