Is Information an Important Science?

Software has very little else. It's information science. Every line of code is a theory about information and about algorithms.

Well, brain chemicals (both "natural" and "drugs"), it could be argued, is an important area of study, and in their relationship to our thoughts and feelings, they are another part of the broader information-science.

I guess when you're writing algorithms for immediate human use then it's both. Then again, maths is a science anyway

Indeed, there is more to a program than the lines of code that meet the technical specs.

Or perhaps it crashes because there's so damn much mathematics and logic with each different layer of software, and so human mistakes inevitably creep in.

It's rarely, I think you'd admit, a physics problem these days. For what we do commonly with software, with the more popular chip architectures, the practical physics lying at the bottom is tried and tested, and relatively well understood, but information problems will never end as long as there's a brain alive.

What about a computer's inputs and outputs, do they not create or record real-world experience? What is your point?

...

Oh? How much more coffee does a programmer use than math or science? Let's say a programmer uses a half liter of coffee per day. How many liters of math or science does a programmer use... ?

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)

One thing I noticed about engineering, compared with Comp Sci, is the equations don't change very much. But programming languages seem to change every 2 years or so. C, C++, Java, C#, DOT NET... not to mention all the different web languages... Perl, PHP, ASP, ...

Michael

Phil Scott wrote: [...]

Heh, wow that's deep. I never thought of the various possible outcomes of an algorithm as being like a fractal of effects, that will inevitably clash with other fractals if they're in the same environment. It works, though. Good analogy.

John Fields wrote: [...]

I don't know who said this first, but it's a good one: "Windows is made to be sold. Linux is made to be used"

Yup, Microsoft.

John

Any decent piece of code isn't fractal, it's a finite state machine. And any programmer worth the title will take into consideration all possible states and all possible input parameters and write code that can't crash. Nobody like that works for Microsoft.

I write embedded, realtime systems that just don't crash.

John

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:01:56 -0700, in message , John Larkin scribed:

Hear, hear.

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:29:28 -0400, in message , Straydog scribed:

For me, it was a job, with some potential artistic overtones.

I don't like microsoft either, but their problem is not bad, malicious or stupid programmers and never has been.

Good for you, and you are rightly proud that your systems "just work", but come back and talk to me about "all possible states" when you're busy writing user-space, interface-heavy applications.

That's where the fractal analogy becomes clear.

On 27 Jun 2006 16:45:29 -0700, in message , snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com scribed:

But there are a seemingly infinite number of engineering equations, and a dizzying array of engineering disciplines. Almost all engineers use programming to some extent, whereas a "programmer" in its basic form does not do engineering. The array of programming languages is limited, and the differences between them are not that difficult to span. For instance, is there that much difference between java and c#? I've used BASIC, FORTRAN, ATLAS, Ada, c, c++, Visual C, Visual Basic, java, html, etc. Variations on a theme.

The OP's point seemed to be a thesis on algorithmic thought, which, if you think about it, is just a latter-day computerized incarnation of philisophical and scientific thought. Many computer "algorithms" are naught more than engineering principles reduced to computerized implementation. The coercing of a computational machine to carry out a scientists or an engineers will. The ghost in the machine is the human's will.

On 27 Jun 2006 09:56:02 -0700, in message , "phaeton" scribed:

Seek ye your local brew master.

On 27 Jun 2006 11:51:03 -0700, in message , "Ron Peterson" scribed:

Wild question here. Would you be the Ron Peterson associated with the Weber State University ComSci department?

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:18:13 -0500, in message , John Fields scribed:

Were you ever a carpenter? You seem to have a knack for hitting the nail on the head.

VMS was a bulletproof multiuser OS that did treat tasks as finite state machines, with a clear bitmask event flag structure that was a rondezvous point that a programmer could focus on. Windows is an asynchronous mess, hacked in desperation, and designed to be impentratable. It is arguably fractal, and it's just crap.

John

a piece of code itself spins from a base algorithm, it is not the algorithm... it is the algorithm that spawns the fractal. and the code..

Thats not possible of course...because no programmer is omnicient, or privy to all possible downline effects... a key error seen with many engineered systems...

yes he can define the inputs...but he cannot define everything that influences those, so its cobby to say the least. ..that mentality is what spawned microcrap.

Nobody like that works for Microsoft.

That is entirely possible in many closed loop environments.. many apparently closed loop enviroments are actually not though... the wild cards enter through those and screw up the glorious program, accounting for all the bugged software and slow or failed operating systems we see.

Whatever is great today, will be antiquated later, sometimes two days later...

the best thing you can do for your brain is to assume that all of what you produce is flawed to the core and in limitless error at some level... this keeps you from locking into what will be seen as cave man level insights a hundred years from now....and worse, expanding from the base of error....thats how George Bush ended up so badly...

Phil Scott

"John Larkin" wrote

Windows is an

of course... in the space program we have lift off... then entropy....in other systems we have just entropy..