On Dec 8, 2003, at 2:50 PM, Tassilo von Parseval wrote: [..]
[..]The current set of perl-porters that are able and willing to work on the core are with not many exceptions people with academic degrees.
hypothetical question,
would one need to be a perl-porter
to write good perl?
{ would it be impolite to note in which language/languages
the perl executable is 'written in'??? }at which point of course we could get massively pedantic and ask why a variety of critical encryption modules are delivered as assembler, and not even as 'c' code... but let us not get too morosse about the limitations of the autodidact.
{ god, but it's been some time since anyone has
called me, or implied, such a polysyllabicsequipedalianism
in my direction. }but since you have been ever so polite as to offer the opportunity, allow me to note one of my most favorite and silly misadventures in AcadamiaLand, that charming dashing PhD from MIT who was trying to explain 'security' based upon calculations of the 'cost' of a brute force attack ... and I tried to disabuse him of his computational wizBangery that if one is actually seeking to crack SIGINT that is not how one goes about it. The more pleasant times of course were fun with the fine prof with at least a sense of elan about the limitation of what he could teach UnderGrads in a computer class on statistical modeling. Fortuitously for me he was 'moon lighting' at the Naval War College, and so was willing to be frank about the folly of statistical analysis, and that there is an 'art' that is not merely the computational component. Or what those of use who had done 'TMA' - Target Motion Analysis - always cite the venerable 'still bill' -
and here you do a 'package check',
and if they are big and brassy...Needless to say the real fun was meeting the gentleman, who wound up as a co-worker, who had introduced my 'academic advisor' to fortran, and then having the fun of sharing my concerns with my former academic advisor as to why it was that they had not introduced, or discussed, say lex or yacc, and the general issues of Regular Expression Engines as a part of the core of their under-grad programme - never mind 'make' et al and there wasn't so much as a by your leave about the importance, and/or socio-cultural issues, with 'source code control systems' ....
{ funny the drieux should be whining about this with
source code control
build and release
installation process
documentation,and prefers to do his RegEx in Perl than in flex/byacc... }
I could go on about the Fun Filled Excitement of reaching for my knuth, and remembering having seen a reference, and then finding that the idea was for the volume he never published... Oye the Pain, had to fix it in code myself the old fashion way...
So when you put my comments to Jason, and those who like jason, may be having issues with the INSANITY of the american educational system, back into their context, then you might want to actually go back and re-read them for what they are.
American society has a lot of issues, and the 'snobbery' of our psuedo intellectuals IS a part of that problem. So when folks step back and put all of that undergrad/gradSchool gambiting back into context it is a whole lot simpler to live with. As I tried to explain to annie who was at Harvard Divinity and complaining about the 'pasty faced' nature of those gradBoys, a part of the problem was that she had taken a bit of time out for things like Refugee Relief Groups and had the misfortune of being involved with people who had a wider range of life experiences than merely trying claw their way to the top of the old academic food chain by any means possible. People who's whole sense of Self rested upon such chimera as their SAT/MSAT/GSAT numbers and their 'certifications' rather than any actual real live,
"this is no shit, you should have been with us when..."
So when I am attacking 'support' for my kvetching at the limitations of the actual academic rigour that college can not teach one to THINK, but can at best provide one with a context to "develop the habit of formal analysis" it might be useful to try to come at me with something a bit more loaded than the perl-porters capabilities.
I can and DO appreciate that there are still too many in america who have tied too much of their sense of self and identity into the "importance" of their college degree as some gateway... but maybe detaching one's self from such false Idolatry Might help???
yes, yes, I know you are posting from aachen, so take the liberty moment and enjoy that I am not complaining about Germany... But if you wish I can do a few Herr Doktor stories if that would make you feel fuzzyWarm?
now let us return to the comical part:
IF you learned how to do the process of learning, Then WHY get a college degree??? IF your skill mix is taking you where you want to be, then rock ON! if it is not, figure out where you want to be and go there.
I am sorry. This only works for the very simple problems. Those problems, that are indeed not teached in university, because a graduate is expected to acquire these things on his own.
Which side of being pro-perl were you on again?
If one is expecting that a graduate will acquire these skills on their own, then are we not advocating that folks will be learning things that are outside of the academic constraints of the university... Since clearly the 'simple problems' are solvable without going to university... Hence one should be able to pick up the llama books, and yes, PICK UP that one on learning Perl Objects, References and Modules, as well as the 3rd Edition...
So one wanted the university system for what again???
TO learn how to write 'sane hashing algorithms' - which is why one is not using the Perl Hash???
I can appreciate that I clearly must have ruffled some feathers, but could the issue be that there is a boring practicality to Perl that still escapes you? A practicality that any reasonable person can acquire??? If on the other hand what they WANT is to understand 'algorithm construction' and sound 'performance analysis' - and the only place that one can do that is, allegedly, in 'the university' then go to it! DO THAT! But suddenly one has a Reasonable Excuse to be IN COLLEGE somewheres! But if the programme is not taking you where you want to go, BAIL! GET OUT! RUN AWAY!
What is the worst that happens?
Forgive me for for one last sea story, but an associate shared the fun of a job interview that was 'going south' as he decided these were not folks he really wanted to work with, and they posited the 'money question' to which he replied,
"They were paying me $65 a month more to kill people..."
now there were people who didn't have a Union to fall back on.
So maybe folks should be worrying about the money they are making for what ever it is they are getting paid to do? They should be improving their skill mix to work on issues that they can get paid for???
Hey, there are worse ways to cover the rent...
ciao drieux
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