[xquery-talk] [xml-dev] Mistakes made in the design of XQuery 3.1

[Ihe Onwuka]

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 4:34 AM, Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:55 AM, daniela florescu <dflorescu at me.com>
> wrote:
>
>> How about starting tomorrow we allow random people from the street,
>> without any medical qualifications, to start
>> doing heart surgery at the Stanford Medical School !???
>>
>> Or we allow anybody from the street, without any architectural or
>> structural mechanics qualifications to start building bridges in San
>> Francisco !?
>>
>> Or tomorrow I'll show up at the San Francisco airport and tell them that
>> I'm the one piloting the plane to New York !?
>>
>> ===========
>>
>> Bottom line...only in software such an aberration is tolerated.....
>>
>>
> Because unlike in the other instances the true effect of software designed
> by amateurs  lies latent and is usually neither  immediately nor outwardly
> apparent.
>
> Tolerated is the wrong word. The entire industry has coalesced around
> technologies and methodologies designed to enable the amateur coder to
> write professional software and these are the people  that determine the
> fate of your engineering solution and what tools and methods you are going
> to have to work with. Look  at the recent changes in MarkLogic and you can
> clearly see where they try to cater to that demographic. Or look at Apache
> Spark - built in Scala - do you think their support for Scala emanates from
> engineering considerations.
>
>
that should read ... do you think their support for Python emanates from
engineering considerations.



> So then you have an environment in which it is more important to know how
> to use these tools and methods than it is to have a fundamental
> understanding of what it is you are doing. As an example (he says
> deliberately avoiding ones close to home), look at Data Science. Industry
> is such that it is more important to know how to program in R than it is to
> have a basic understanding of Statistics, but the nature of the output they
> produce is such that the effects of such practices will remain camouflaged
> for a long time to come (or until the UK has another general election). R
> in particular is one to watch, because of all the hype you have a
> confluence of people who know little about Statistics and even less about
> programming.
>
> I could go on..... the reality is that today people today want to query
>  semi-structured data in Javascript, Python and R and you can't look to
> their management because  this is the first generation that grew up with
>  managers that did not have a computer science or engineering background.
>
> So sadly Daniela, politics and populism trump engineering and not enough
> lives are at risk in what we do for that to ever change. The choice is to
> come to terms with it, go back to research or find something else to do.
>
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>> Dana
>>
>>
>>
>> On May 28, 2015, at 10:29 PM, Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> But you are not producing solutions for other engineers.
>>
>> If you tell a developer with zero engineering qualifications their design
>> is structurally flawed or that they are using the wrong tools they (or
>> their boss) will turn around and tell you  that there are several ways of
>> doing things and theirs is equally valid...... and that's if they are being
>> polite.
>>
>> Then a couple of epochs and a failed project later they will get feted
>> for writing a blog about how you shouldn't use what they used or shouldn't
>> do what they did. Most probably said blog will focus on the effects of what
>> they did because they probably still don't understand the cause.
>>
>> On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:43 PM, daniela florescu <dflorescu at me.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>> It proves that when it comes to IT you can put lipstick on a pig. If you
>>> were trying to name the language today JShit would probably market test
>>> better than XQuery.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That’s why I’m so tired of the database “science” and the database
>>> “scientific” community, and I run away to 3D and Augmented reality — which
>>> is at the beginning,
>>> nobody makes billions (yet) and there is still some love of technology,
>>> some honesty and integrity, and deep, serious enthusiasm.  There is still
>>> some innocence...
>>>
>>> Right now the “database market” is just lipstick on a (VERY LARGE) pig.
>>> Lots of money spent on marketing scream, and unfortunately developers flock
>>> like sheep
>>>  towards the ones who scream the most, without any clue of “why”.
>>>
>>> Yet we have no clue why a solution is better then other, no benchmarks,
>>> just hacky solutions, or temporary solutions which will disappear in 5-10
>>> years, etc.
>>>
>>> Maybe it's because of your abhorrence of stupidity you tend not to stick
>>> around long enough to witness just how stupid some people are.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I am VERY patient when I want to.... I did stay with the XML
>>> community since 1997, despite my deep dislike for processing
>>> instructions... :-)
>>>
>>> But I see my role as an engineer to build good engineering solutions,
>>> not to increase the IQ of the general population. That’s not my job.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> Dana
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> talk at x-query.com
>> http://x-query.com/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>>
>>
>
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