Re: Constraints and Functional Dependencies

paul c wrote:

> Bob Badour wrote:
> ...
>

>> Why then do I know so many physicists in the software field?

That was my whole point. The troll originally conjectured that asians and russians are too indoctrinated about some mythical value of "math/physics/whatever" by their parents to pursue money.

> The most honest physicist I met told me he went into headhunting after
> some years because he realized he would always be mediocre compared to
> the elite physicists. I've met one or two software types who would have
> been brilliant had they followed their majors and gone into chemistry or
> engineering but they would have been poorer. Another who dropped out of
> highschool at age fourteen to program a mainframe full-time. The school
> board gave permission because it was their mainframe. None of these
> people had a way with words but they expressed themselves very clearly
> with a small vocabulary. Had theirs been bigger, I am certain they
> would have found that unnecessary for the purposes they chose.
>
> When I complained about a technical developer's contradictory memos, I
> was told that he didn't go to university to learn English. Same group,
> averaging more than two degrees per person, mostly North American plus a
> Russian or two, wrote 140 page design document for a very limited GUI
> translator, after being asked for ten. A quick scan was enough to see
> it was pure gibberish. Company president claimed he had mastered it all
> in 90 minutes and would fund it. His major had been basketball. I told
> him I wouldn't read it until they told me which page the design was on.
> Asked where the engine was, he turned around to the flunkies and said
> "Well, where's the engine?".
>
> That problem was an order or two of magnitude smaller than the one Codd
> took eleven pages to describe in 1970 but which created a sensation
> within the small audience it got then. Yet Codd was said by some to
> write obscurely. Date gets deserved credit for his breadth of
> theoretical and practical knowledge. I would say just as much is due to
> his ability to express himself clearly (except for the Latin, of course).

He does like the latin.

> Contrast those two with Celko who given a fifteen word description,
> using conventional cdt verbiage, of a very simple relation, feels it
> relevant today to mention the "lowest units", whatever they might be, of
> a data model and to speak of the "container level", whatever that might
> be. Based on his history, I'd say whatever they might be today will
> likely be different tomorrow and whatever that is, it's not likely to
> have much to do with the topic. Or Dawn who first says that TTM refers
> to "logical navigation" and then that she is the only person who uses
> the term. Who says to the effect that "navigation vs declaration" is an
> incorrect "assessment". What the hell are they talking about? If they
> were granted degrees I believe they have a good case for getting their
> money back plus damages and costs. Not just those two - if there is a
> budding young lawyer out there looking for a goldmine, a certain one is
> class-action lawsuits against the irresponsible granting of degrees to
> millions of people, let alone high-school matriculations.

The class-action thing will never fly. It's not like one has to be particularly smart or particularly well-educated to become a judge. And the well-educated geniuses on the bench know better than to upset that apple cart. Received on Fri Mar 02 2007 - 00:56:07 CET