Carpentry (was: learning languages)

[Francois-Rene Rideau <address@hidden>]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 11:58:55AM -0500, Adam Turoff wrote:
> I don't know if the differences *can* be addressed.  Much of the
> differences in programmer capabilities mimic the same kinds of
> distributions found with other endeavors.  
> 
> If you look at carpentry, there is a definite bell-curve distribution
> in skills. [...]
>
Hum. This opens two burning questions:
1) what kind of carpenter was Jesus?
2) more to the point of this list, which kind of hatchett should
carpenters use: sharp ones, or dull ones?
	http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basSoph5.html#S.2,%20Ch.3,%20The%20Two%20Hatchets

Actually, I'd guess this list would be about making better hatchetts.
Except that carpenters don't make hatchets -- toolsmiths do.
On the contrary, programmers make both the furniture
AND the tools with which to build the furniture,
and something the house in which to put it all, too.

We manipulate universal machines, and that distinguishes our activity,
for better or for worse, from most other activities.
And this list is _precisely_ about the specificities of universal machines.

> You're the only person who is linking differences between programmers to
> genetic superiority.  I certainly never mentioned, asserted or implied it.
Just because there are no cheaply ascertainable relationship between
programmers' genome and their skills does not mean that such relationships
don't exist. My! I am a much better programmer than most llamas, and I'll
bet my shirt that this is completely traceable to genetic differences.

All that to say that politically correct relativism sucks.
Yes, we're different. And yes, we are superior in many ways.
There I said it. Superior. S U P E R I O R.
Of course, I can also see quite a few ways in which we are inferior.
Shrug.

Sorry for this interruption. Now, back to your usual programs.
Or preferrably, onward to new programs that no men programmed before!

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
[  TUNES project for a Free Reflective Computing System  | http://tunes.org  ]
Racism consists in attributing to genetics that which is due to memetics. -- F