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It it just me who is seeing a cowardly surrender to cultural decay here? From the renowned Sussman, no less. The glorious MIT of the 1980s and prior appears to

It it just me who is seeing a cowardly surrender to cultural decay here? From the renowned Sussman, no less. The glorious MIT of the 1980s and prior appears to be dead. Erased, in fact, without a trace. Consider the following: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=2 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=2 These are the latest releases from MIT press. Among them you will find nothing remotely like SICP, but plenty of postmodernist/related pablum. "You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts." Is this not an atrocity, to be fought to the last bullet? Is this not an argument for declaring all existing software obsolete and starting from scratch? Why are we - even luminaries like Sussman - so willing to give up on the future without a fight? As argued in some of PG's essays, in order for creativity to bear fruit it is not enough for a given individual to possess a creative mind. The culture has to be hospitable to creativity. And there are processes which come close to stamping out creativity without any overt or deliberate suppression involved. Specifically, a transition to a medium where one cannot get reliable, understandable "small parts" having predictable behavior. Take note: http://xkcd.com/298/ http://xkcd.com/298/ Programmers have indeed created a universe where "science doesn't work." Learning where the permanent bugs and workarounds are inside a phonebook-length API teaches you nothing. It is anti-knowledge. Where your mind could have instead held something lastingly useful or truly beautiful, there is now garbage. There is no longer a "what you see is all there is" Commodore 64 for kids to play with: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=16 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=16 No one is working on, or sees the need for a replacement. This is just as well, considering as one would have to start from bare silicon - and avoid the use of design tools built on the decaying crud of the past. Only a raving lunatic would dare contemplate it... Outside of programming: Linus Pauling developed an interest in chemistry by experimenting incessantly throughout his childhood. Today, he would have been imprisoned: http://memepunks.blogspot.com/2006/06/americas-war-on-science.html http://memepunks.blogspot.com/2006/06/americas-war-on-scienc... The new generation will have no Linus Pauling, unless the Third World - where one might still purchase a beaker without a license - supplies us with one. Likewise, we will see very few truly creative programmers. What creativity can there be when your medium is shit mixed with sawdust?

sethg 18y ago
MIT Press has about as much to do with the MIT undergraduate curriculum as the MIT Real Estate Office, so I don't think citing their new-books list proves anything.
danbmil99 18y ago
"You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts." Is this not an atrocity, to be fought to the last bullet?" I think it's an acceptance of reality. There is a phase change when systems become too complex for a single human to ever understand them in their entirety. Dealing with systems at that level is a different beast than dealing with simpler systems where "what you see is all there is". "What creativity can there be when your medium is shit mixed with sawdust?" The same sort of creativity artists possess, who work with media that are idiosyncratic. It's a different mindset. I see the reddit-gen programmers talk about things on a completely meta-level. To them, MySql is the hardware. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some of them hopefully will dig down the stack and be the low-level heroes. But that should (and probably can) only be a small percentage. Now I guess one could argue that those sorts of heroes are what MIT is supposed to produce, but as has been mentioned, this course is not just for CS students. So the real question is, can the CS heroes of tomorrow survive an introductory course in Python? Well, consider that they have probably been modding games since 10, hacking PhP at 12, realizing at 14 they need to learn a 'real' language (C#, Ruby, Python), by 15 I bet they've abstracted out the fact that languages are not all that important; they're just the tip of the iceberg of complexity. So yes, I think they will survive.
- asciilifeform 18y ago
  >I think it's an acceptance of reality. All of technological progress consists of refusing to roll over and "accept reality" - instead, attacking it and modifying it to suit our needs. >There is a phase change when systems become too complex for a single human to ever understand them in their entirety. This is how innovation dies. The disease is preventable: http://naggum.no/erik/complexity.html http://naggum.no/erik/complexity.html > To them, MySql is the hardware. Is it a bad thing? Yes! It is. A programmer's finite mental capacity for dealing with complexity is consumed by an ever-greater load of accidental complexity - inconsistencies in the medium learning about which teaches you nothing. They are holes in reality. The thing that made modern technology possible is that physics, chemistry, etc. do not have "bugs." A correctly set up experiment will yield the same results when done a week from now, in Australia, etc. And in the end, there are unifying principles governing it, which will explain everything that happened in a way that teaches you something permanent. A medium with "holes", like a buggy programming system, is a universe where "science does not work": http://xkcd.com/298/ http://xkcd.com/298/ > Some of them hopefully will dig down the stack Wading in sewage. > languages are not all that important This statement is true when the languages are all equally crippled - as they increasingly are, through their reliance on an ever-sinking foundation of 35-year-old rotting OS.

sethg 18y ago

MIT Press has about as much to do with the MIT undergraduate curriculum as the MIT Real Estate Office, so I don't think citing their new-books list proves anything.

danbmil99 18y ago

"You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts." Is this not an atrocity, to be fought to the last bullet?" I think it's an acceptance of reality. There is a phase change when systems become too complex for a single human to ever understand them in their entirety. Dealing with systems at that level is a different beast than dealing with simpler systems where "what you see is all there is". "What creativity can there be when your medium is shit mixed with sawdust?" The same sort of creativity artists possess, who work with media that are idiosyncratic. It's a different mindset. I see the reddit-gen programmers talk about things on a completely meta-level. To them, MySql is the hardware. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some of them hopefully will dig down the stack and be the low-level heroes. But that should (and probably can) only be a small percentage. Now I guess one could argue that those sorts of heroes are what MIT is supposed to produce, but as has been mentioned, this course is not just for CS students. So the real question is, can the CS heroes of tomorrow survive an introductory course in Python? Well, consider that they have probably been modding games since 10, hacking PhP at 12, realizing at 14 they need to learn a 'real' language (C#, Ruby, Python), by 15 I bet they've abstracted out the fact that languages are not all that important; they're just the tip of the iceberg of complexity. So yes, I think they will survive.

asciilifeform 18y ago
>I think it's an acceptance of reality. All of technological progress consists of refusing to roll over and "accept reality" - instead, attacking it and modifying it to suit our needs. >There is a phase change when systems become too complex for a single human to ever understand them in their entirety. This is how innovation dies. The disease is preventable: http://naggum.no/erik/complexity.html http://naggum.no/erik/complexity.html > To them, MySql is the hardware. Is it a bad thing? Yes! It is. A programmer's finite mental capacity for dealing with complexity is consumed by an ever-greater load of accidental complexity - inconsistencies in the medium learning about which teaches you nothing. They are holes in reality. The thing that made modern technology possible is that physics, chemistry, etc. do not have "bugs." A correctly set up experiment will yield the same results when done a week from now, in Australia, etc. And in the end, there are unifying principles governing it, which will explain everything that happened in a way that teaches you something permanent. A medium with "holes", like a buggy programming system, is a universe where "science does not work": http://xkcd.com/298/ http://xkcd.com/298/ > Some of them hopefully will dig down the stack Wading in sewage. > languages are not all that important This statement is true when the languages are all equally crippled - as they increasingly are, through their reliance on an ever-sinking foundation of 35-year-old rotting OS.