Re: consolidation of multiple rows

On Mar 9, 10:58 pm, DA Morgan <damor..._at_psoug.org> wrote:
> Alex Kuznetsov wrote:
> > Strange. In our trade most great people are largely self taught in the
> > areas they are great in - the industry is new, and people are coming
> > up with innovations all the time.
>
> Innovations all the time ... yes. Innovations all the time in medicine
> too.
>
> But "new"? I would disagree.
>

As compared to law, medicine, and engineering, which have been around for generations, IT is still very new.
Suppose a professor is ten years behind the practice. In law ten years is just a tiny fraction. But being ten years behind in IT is huge.

> > Memorizing last names has nothing to do with the ability to administer
> > databases. Names of inventors are forgotten and or omitted all the
> > time. This is especially true for foreign names. Consider periodic
> > table of the chemical elements - it is being taught in American
> > schools, but the Russian name of its inventor is rarely mentioned.
> > Similarly, names of inventors on Normal Forms may be omitted of
> > forgotten, especially in other countries, and that is OK just as well.
>
> Teaching at university I hear this argument all the time ... from
> those who haven't a degree. I'll grant you don't seem to be part of
> that crowd ... but I'll still respectfully disagree.
>

As for me, I hear this argument all the time from PhDs who got their degrees and left academia to work in the industry. Clearly one and the same standard should be applied to prominent scientists regardless of their origin.

> I've no doubt someone could, in theory, be a physics genius without
> knowing the names Newton and Einstein.

With all due respect to inventors of normal forms, I think that Newton, Mendeleev and Einstein contributed significantly more, so the comparison is incorrect. Received on Mon Mar 10 2008 - 20:41:11 CDT