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In Lamport's defence: (1) He's Leslie Lamport, so his comments about academic Computer Science should be at least considered before they are dismissed. (2) His

by ajarmst 10y ago

In Lamport's defence: (1) He's Leslie Lamport, so his comments about academic Computer Science should be at least considered before they are dismissed. (2) His audience (and the target of his critique) was not an arbitrary set of self-taught programmers, hackers, and vencap enthusiasts. It was mathematicians and computer scientists who went to a Leslie Lamport talk. Ability to read basic set theory notation isn't exactly something that's weird to expect in that environment. (3) The notation he is using is not at all complex or obscure in academic CS. You literally would have trouble reading even rudimentary papers and summaries of basic theorems in CS if you couldn't follow that notation. He's pointing out that he's seeing a lot of people who claim to be CS people that have the sort of disability that a "physicist" who doesn't know what a matrix or determinant is would have. Without those rudiments, they just can't follow the discussion. If you can't follow the duscussion, you can't contribute to it. CS != Programming.

outworlder 10y ago
He is correct in the sense that computer scientists should be able to understand that. I'm one, or at least my diploma says that, even though I'm as far away from the academia nowadays as it gets. So, I watched the lecture on youtube. Speaking as someone who was glossing over the mathematical notation and essentially deferring to the speaker for correctness, I could not do it from the time he called it into attention to the time he asked for hands up. I wouldn't have put my hand up, had I been at the audience then. Had he asked "are you able to understand this notation", then I'd put my hands up. Scanning to see if anything unfamiliar is there takes hardly any time at all. Actually reading and being confident that you understand what it means and all the implications takes time, for someone who doesn't do that on a daily basis. Using a very silly example: e = mc^2. Can you read it? Certainly. Do you understand it?

by ajarmst 10y ago

outworlder 10y ago

He is correct in the sense that computer scientists should be able to understand that. I'm one, or at least my diploma says that, even though I'm as far away from the academia nowadays as it gets. So, I watched the lecture on youtube. Speaking as someone who was glossing over the mathematical notation and essentially deferring to the speaker for correctness, I could not do it from the time he called it into attention to the time he asked for hands up. I wouldn't have put my hand up, had I been at the audience then. Had he asked "are you able to understand this notation", then I'd put my hands up. Scanning to see if anything unfamiliar is there takes hardly any time at all. Actually reading and being confident that you understand what it means and all the implications takes time, for someone who doesn't do that on a daily basis. Using a very silly example: e = mc^2. Can you read it? Certainly. Do you understand it?