On Monday 24 January 2005 16:30, Danny Lieberman wrote: > Gilad > > No arguments there - the best programmers I ever had the privilege to > work with were either engineers or physicists - mostly physicists :-) > In other words; a Computer Scientist is like a Musicologist - they > perform theoretical study of the field and are equally likely to be > proficient performing musicians or programmers > > However it may be instructive to compare professional musicians and > professional programmers (btw many programmers play) > > 1. musicians practice all the time and learn by emulating other > performers as part of their theoretical studies > 2. CS student who "emulate" are thrown out for cheating (hackers emulate) I disagree with that statement to some point. The very goal of studies, as traditionally presented, is to learn to emulate or "model" your teacher in solving problems of some sort. This barely gives you the tools to solve problems of sort unknown to you, to which no theory still exists, or draw new theories. However, musicians are given tools and ways to know to play all existing music and composers know how to compose new music of known or unknown style and it still sounds like music. There is a nice book called "The Programmers' Stone", by Alan G. Carter and Colston Sanger. The autors try to understand what's going on in a mind of a programmer. Nice reading.
> 1.musicians are trained to play together in groups of 2, 3 ,5 ,7, 17 etc.. > 2. CS students might do a 2 or 3 man project once or twice - working > together is called "cheating". Well they still do it, most of the time. Ideas belong to a group, only the implementations are different. The very difference is that you can't compare their way of thinking. Ordinary good musicians are "packers", great programmers and composers are clearly "mappers". Also an interesting thing is that long-time team coworkers tend to generate identical ideas, simultaneously, as they share the same "map". > 1. musicians can sit in with a professional ensemble and play from the > chart in their first year > 2. CS students cant even dream of working in a professional programming > team in their first year Most CS students. Some programmers never feel the need to study CS, as in to go to university. Define me what you call a successful programmer, then we'll talk. :) > 1. musicians learn from the conductor in many different rehearsal > settings every day > 2. CS students learn from books or peers, the notion of a "prgrm > rehearsal doesnt exist Yet. We don't really know what makes a good programmer, do we? So far we are as close to making one as showing a student what other people do in hope he does the same. Doing it Better(tm) is something entirely different. Few musicians become composers, a fraction of composers become good composers. One or two of these are remembered 100 years later. CS is IMO still too, too young to draw any lines or make conclusions. > 1. music is the ultimate open source - over 1000 years old? I beg You pardon? That's the most flagrant underestimation since Mercutio's famous last words. The Ancient Greeks knew almost everything we know about music which they connected to math. The history of music goes back to tribal cave sounds around the fire and the invention of the bow, which is believed to be an early prototype of the harp. :) > 2. ergo programmers have a lot to learn from musicians So, the question is, can you really compare? ;) -- Sincerely Yours, Vasiliev Michael NP: XMMS is not loaded. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
