Re: PSEUDO-SCIENCE ?

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
> John Denker ended his valuable comments with this:
>
> > Where I work, a computer scientist who spent "a year or two"
> > learning Pascal or Java would be fired.  Somebody who took
> > a week or two would be embarrassed.  A day or two would
> > be more like it.
>
> What is the name of this institution, and of this department?
> I was referring to ways in which computer science is seen by
> busy teachers, not by those who practice it professionally.

Surely the frustrations of a music teacher in trying to keep on top of
string theory would not invalidate string theory as science.

Most of us are not computer scientists (in fact many who graduate with
"Computer Science" degrees aren't either) - we are end users/consumers.
The fact that the product we use is a programming language doesn't
change this.  So just as we keep getting tossed from Beta-VHS-DVD etc,
so also we will with the programming environments which we choose to use
- especially if we choose to be trendy (because what is "in" changes a
lot faster than what is useful) or to rely on commercial interests where
forcing you to "upgrade" (whether you really need to or not) is how they
survive, so they will naturally do it as frequently as possible. I see
**a lot** more Linux users coming through my physic web sites than the
others - I think physicists are more capable than most of getting up to
speed on it, and once they do they find themselves with more control
over their computer and freer from commercial pressures. (Perhaps we're
just getting caught up in another trend though.)

()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()

Doug Craigen
          Latest Project - the Physics E-source
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/