Re: What databases have taught me

From: Bruno Desthuilliers <onurb_at_xiludom.gro>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:26:31 +0200
Message-ID: <44b3a709$0$18630$626a54ce@news.free.fr>

Bob Badour wrote:
> topmind wrote:
>

>> Tony D wrote:
>>
>>> topmind wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tony D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> without resorting to stuffing
>>>>> some more-or-less random test cases through it as some kind of
>>>>> demonstration that it kind-of, maybe, perhaps does what we want it to,
>>>>> for these semi-random test cases at least ?"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have kicked around approaches to measure the code impact of various
>>>> change scenarios. The problem is that people also perceive change
>>>> differently, I've found out, such that they would assign different
>>>> frequency estimates, which were required to get a total score.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Exactly. You've "kicked around approaches to measure the code impact of
>>> various change scenarios". But without being able to formally reason
>>> about behaviour in the abstract, before a piece of code is even
>>> written, you're fighting a losing battle, making more-or-less educated
>>> guesses.
>>
>>
>> Again, it is not clear to me what you are proposing. Formal proving is
>> not a common industry practice.

>
>
> And your point would be? You seem to be trying to make a claim about
> computing science, but you measure that by the properties of industry
> practice. Given that many of us think the state of the industry is
> appalling and characterized mostly by ignorance, misconception and
> anti-intellectualism, you won't convince many of us with that sort of
> non sequitur.

Bob,

"topmind" is our pet crank here on comp.object. He has a great record of asserting things without being able to back them with anything else than "I don't know why but it is so", then challenging the others to prove him wrong, then dismissing answers as either "lab example" (implied : can't work in real life) or "irrelevant to it's own 'niche'" (which is defined as "custom biz apps", whatever this may mean). FWIW, he admitted believing RM was "a brass-bullet" (while not believing in silver-bullet...)

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'onurb_at_xiludom.gro'.split('@')])"

Received on Tue Jul 11 2006 - 08:26:31 CDT