Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Sergei Steshenko]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Søren Hauberg <address@hidden>
> To: Sergei Steshenko <address@hidden>
> Cc: Freddy López <address@hidden>; "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 9:00 PM
> Subject: Re: Woctave-another gui front end
> 
> 
> On Dec 5, 2012, at 9:04 AM, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
>>  If people can't read documents, they shouldn't be doing 
> engineering, scientific and development work.
> 
> And if people can't be polite and respect that different people have 
> different needs they should not speak in public.
> 
> Ahh, the joys of making absolute statements about non-absolutes…
> 
> Søren
>

You know, in math there is a notion of limit ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_%28mathematics%29 ).

And sometimes it makes sense to visualize a limit.

I believe that, as I said, "If people can't read documents, they shouldn't be 
doing engineering, scientific and development work", and the visualized limit 
is the crowd in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Ic_OvIPtU .

...

I am reading a lot of info on what's happening in "science".

On Slashdot there was a story about a "scientist" (IIRC a physiologist) who in 
detail described the method he was using to process experimental data. He was 
describing it as if he genuinely came up with it - which I believe was true. 
I.e. I believe he came up with it.

The problem is that he came up with 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezoidal_rule .



In another place I read about an "expert" in electrodynamics who was claiming 
in order to detect 1.5km electromagnetic wavelength one needs an antenna of 
comparable length.



I also read about "scientists" (with background in mechanics) who were using 
finite element software for modeling of gas and liquid flows in order to model 
movement of matter inside nanotubes with 1 atom thick walls. And when they were 
told that electron clouds are not exactly kind of matter one finds in home 
piping, they didn't pay any attention - they were not taught quantum mechanics 
in particular, and they were not taught the notion of applicability in physics.


So, you better decide what kind of people you personally and Octave community 
in general want to support. While making the decision I strongly suggest to 
remember the following:

"first class people surround themselves with first class people; second class 
people surround themselves with third class people"

, etc.



Also, a useful story for you - I read it in the nineties.


A system administrator upgraded a female accountant's computer with a faster 
one (the computer was running Windows).

The accountant soon came to the administrator complaining that the new computer 
truncates files when they are copied.

The administrator was quite surprised to hear that, so he asked the how she 
came to that conclusion. She answered: "You know, when files are being copied, 
sheets of paper fly on the screen. So with the old computer when I was copying 
that file five sheets of paper flew, and now only three".



Beware, you are likely going to help those 5 -> 3 sheets of paper kind of 
people.


And the truth of my life is that I came from the educational system which did 
have admittance exams. I myself had first to pass admittance exams at the age 
of 14. Later in that school in the first semester there was a noticeable number 
of dropouts - even though originally they passed admittance exams.

The school was supposed to teach us math and physics at certain level, not to 
make us feel good and easy. And we didn't - this first semester was quite 
difficult.


But the reward was actually quite high - first year at the university was quite 
easy. Among other things because we came with pretty in-depth (with theorem 
proving - not simple indoctrination) of calculus and with pretty good knowledge 
of physics. For example, photoelectric effect was explained using quantum 
theory.


Also, even though my first computing experience was using a computer with 
punched cards ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card ), somehow the 
educational system was smart enough to teach us _first_ numerical methods of 
computations, and only then to let us do real programming.


You probably remember how frequently people ask here questions because of 
complete lack of understanding what floating point math is.


And that's why uneducated/undereducated people who can't read documents 
shouldn't be doing engineering, scientific and development work.


_Exactly_ because they are utilizing time and energy of more educated people 
who did bother to read documents enabling them to do engineering, scientific 
and development work.



Regards,
  Sergei.


P.S. Even though I more often than disagree with Jordi, (re)read what he 
recently wrote about Octave users coming from Matlab world. Maybe you'll see 
conceptual similarities.