Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1486

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 04:07:14 GMT in alt.folklore.computers, "Hank

As Brooks and others have been trying to point out for decades, the real problems in computing are not mathematical, not scientific, and nothing to do with computing; the problems are organizational, political, sociological, and psychological.

Look at the development of OS-360 and SNA; now compare that to the development of VM and VNET. IBM concluded the latter could not exist, because there were no substantial unaccounted for people, money, or resources. It was done on a shoestring by one person in a short period of time, provided enough useful function to get deployed everywhere, and the company couldn't operate without it.

Look at just about any good, successful software: produced by one or a few people, in a fairly short period of time, to get something done; subsequently adopted by many, enhanced, improved, spreads further.

Look at any widespread de facto standard; they became that because they were open: a sample implementation was done; the info was fairly well known and spread; others jumped on the bandwagon, adopted it and it spread further.

Science allows you to look at what you've got, once you have it; but in computing, someone has to do something useful first, before you have anything to analyse scientifically. Limiting analysis to only what can be handled tractably with mathematics, and verifying results scientifically, only tells you about where you've been, it hasn't shown anyone where they should go, so far. Biology, biochemistry, and genetics have whipped past computer science in the same timeframe, evolving from descriptive and diagnostic to prescriptive and productive.

-- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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