<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 4:34 AM, Ihe Onwuka <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ihe.onwuka@gmail.com" target="_blank">ihe.onwuka@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="">On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:55 AM, daniela florescu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dflorescu@me.com" target="_blank">dflorescu@me.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">How about starting tomorrow we allow random people from the street, without any medical qualifications, to start <div>doing heart surgery at the Stanford Medical School !???</div><div><br></div><div>Or we allow anybody from the street, without any architectural or structural mechanics qualifications to start building bridges in San Francisco !?</div><div><br></div><div>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 !?</div><div><br></div><div>===========</div><div><br></div><div>Bottom line...only in software such an aberration is tolerated.....</div><div><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Because unlike in the other instances the true effect of software designed by amateurs lies latent and is usually neither immediately nor outwardly apparent.<br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>that should read ... do you think their support for Python emanates from engineering considerations.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><span class=""><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div></div><div>Dana</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><div>On May 28, 2015, at 10:29 PM, Ihe Onwuka <<a href="mailto:ihe.onwuka@gmail.com" target="_blank">ihe.onwuka@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br></div></div><div><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">But you are not producing solutions for other engineers.</div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">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. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">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.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:43 PM, daniela florescu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dflorescu@me.com" target="_blank">dflorescu@me.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><span><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div></span><div>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,</div><div>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...</div><div><br></div><div>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</div><div> towards the ones who scream the most, without any clue of “why”.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><span><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>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.</div></div></div></div>
</div></blockquote><br></span></div><div>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... :-)</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards</div><div>Dana</div><div><br></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div>
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