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Re: Quote by Knuth


From: Emanuel Berg
Subject: Re: Quote by Knuth
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:54:17 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> I understand that. About twenty years ago, I tried it.
> It gets things even more complicated than they are.

Yes, of course, as macros involve yet another layer
in-between. You don't write source to do stuff, you write
source to write source to do stuff.

> I rather have a number of small well contained
> implementations. I disagree with Knuth that a practitioner
> of literate programming becomes an essayist, whose main
> concern is with exposition and excellence of style, rather
> than how to perform the actual computation.

Aha, so that's the idea/vision! Well, how poetic! But very
impractical in all the easy cases, and even more so in the
difficult ones.

> The biggest problem has always been how to do something,
> rather than how to describe it.

Well, these are two different tendencies, and where they all
lead, only Jehovah knows. For example the thought with C++,
C with classes, solve the problem by creating a model (an OO
model) of it. An interesting thought that lead to a small
revolution of the ... computer game industry? And today, the
C++ enthusiasts are often not enthusiastic about OO. "It was
big in the 90s, but ..."

> I gave up trying to put everything in one file.

Say what, of course you can't do that :)

> And if done by students the problems will became even worse.

OK, so what group do you belong to? Please tell so we can
generalize negatively about them.

> I know a few professors myself claiming to work on the
> dynamic properties of everything and the bullshit they say
> they have developed. They say they develop the theories,
> they develop the computational algorithms needed, they do
> everything. Until you do some work with them and realise
> there's not much to their work. Welcome to the world of
> academia in the western world.
>
> Consider Ramanujan and Perelman for instance. Both have
> worked from some pit hole making great soup.
> Modern societies have started treating everything as in some
> state of illness. The second largest industry on the planet
> is pharmaceuticals, which makes too much lousy soup.
>
> You just have to look at how the development of the
> coronavirus vaccines are happening ! Everyday, you have to
> add something else to them, else they won't work. If you're
> constantly creating nasty chemistry, how can life within you
> understand that you're seeking well-being?

Hm ... maybe the group is people with justice
obsession syndrome? If so, yeah, they stink.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal




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