5 ms·

There may be space in the whole curriculum for that, but it's probably not essential here and now. The whole pull of Bret Victor's presentations is that they sh

by drostie 12y ago

There may be space in the whole curriculum for that, but it's probably not essential here and now. The whole pull of Bret Victor's presentations is that they show us what it would look like to program if our tools were as modern as Word. The baking-metaphor problem is that you have students who are supposed to come in and investigate how the arrangements of toppings on a pizza affect both nebulous qualities (like deliciousness and heterogeneity) and rigorously measurable ones (like moisture and elasticity) of the pizza crust. However, when they come to your kitchen, usually most professors put them in a totally new room which contains millstones and grain and milk ready to be turned into fresh mozzarella, with nothing labeled. There are reasons for this -- real pizza aficionados have very different choices about how they want to compose their sauces and which cheeses they want on the finished result and even what leavening agent causes the dough to rise, so the framework for pizza-baking is as general-purpose as possible. But those reasons make things difficult for the newcomer. The professor is just saying, "when we start, I walk everyone through the process of finding the flours over here, the additives over there, and using the bread-machine to mix them and knead them. I then show them where to find the canned sauces and the pre-grated cheeses, so that they can start with minimal knowledge baking up some pizzas for science. Our concerns are very high-level and I want them to be fussing with baking times and topping arrangements, but so many of my students seem to be stuck on trying to turn milk into mozzarella."

Kalium 12y ago
The problem he overlooks is that we do not want our tools to be "as modern as Word". We want modern tools, but not modern as Word defines it. There are excellent solutions for his problem. Distributing a pre-configured VM is a good one. Instead, he wants students to have the experience of bootstrapping, but he also wants it to be painless and magical. But instead of looking at his actual problem, he's wound up railing against all the critical freedom that makes the field something other than a glorified exercise in painting by numbers. EDIT: For the record, turning milk into mozzarella is actually really easy and quite suitable for a novice. I've done it. Takes about an hour, end to end.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  My understanding is that this is not so much for a single course (where a VM would be a good solution) as for general student research. Prepackaged works less well there (though may still be made to work).
  - Kalium 12y ago
    When you set out to blaze a new trail, you should not expect to find a nice paved road with bus service. If he decides to ignore all the tools (puppet, chef, scripts, etc.) designed to make all of this easier, that's his fault.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      > If he decides to ignore all the tools (puppet, chef, scripts, etc.) designed to make all of this easier, that's his fault. You're kidding here, right? I find Puppet and Chef superconfusing and not worth the effort to learn at my job right now, and I'm a fucking programmer by hobby and profession. This is exactly the kind of bullshit people doing science should never have to deal with.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        Puppet, at least, is pretty straightforward. You are describing what you want your system to look like. Puppet takes that description and makes your system look like that. People doing science who want to use computers should expect to have to learn a thing or two about using them. As in more than using Word if they want to do complex, custom, not-done-before tasks. Much like people who want to do novel things in chemistry should expect to learn more than how to make black powder. This guy is upset that novel things haven't already been thought of and planned for by the people who make shiny GUIs. This is a farcical position. If it's really that novel, of course nobody's written a GUI for it. Point is, tools to address his problem already exist. He dismisses them, because they don't do it in an arbitrarily flexible and powerful way while still being infinitely iTunes-y.

by drostie 12y ago

Kalium 12y ago

The problem he overlooks is that we do not want our tools to be "as modern as Word". We want modern tools, but not modern as Word defines it. There are excellent solutions for his problem. Distributing a pre-configured VM is a good one. Instead, he wants students to have the experience of bootstrapping, but he also wants it to be painless and magical. But instead of looking at his actual problem, he's wound up railing against all the critical freedom that makes the field something other than a glorified exercise in painting by numbers. EDIT: For the record, turning milk into mozzarella is actually really easy and quite suitable for a novice. I've done it. Takes about an hour, end to end.

dllthomas 12y ago
My understanding is that this is not so much for a single course (where a VM would be a good solution) as for general student research. Prepackaged works less well there (though may still be made to work).
- Kalium 12y ago
  When you set out to blaze a new trail, you should not expect to find a nice paved road with bus service. If he decides to ignore all the tools (puppet, chef, scripts, etc.) designed to make all of this easier, that's his fault.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > If he decides to ignore all the tools (puppet, chef, scripts, etc.) designed to make all of this easier, that's his fault. You're kidding here, right? I find Puppet and Chef superconfusing and not worth the effort to learn at my job right now, and I'm a fucking programmer by hobby and profession. This is exactly the kind of bullshit people doing science should never have to deal with.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      Puppet, at least, is pretty straightforward. You are describing what you want your system to look like. Puppet takes that description and makes your system look like that. People doing science who want to use computers should expect to have to learn a thing or two about using them. As in more than using Word if they want to do complex, custom, not-done-before tasks. Much like people who want to do novel things in chemistry should expect to learn more than how to make black powder. This guy is upset that novel things haven't already been thought of and planned for by the people who make shiny GUIs. This is a farcical position. If it's really that novel, of course nobody's written a GUI for it. Point is, tools to address his problem already exist. He dismisses them, because they don't do it in an arbitrarily flexible and powerful way while still being infinitely iTunes-y.