So what is the difference between a software engineer and computer scientist?

Or that there is a god but it couldn't give a rat's ass what we say or do. Or that it likes it when humans are evil and cruel. I've seen little evidence to the contrary.

After all, if there WAS a just and benevolent god, Juliet Prowse would be alive and Jesse Helms would be dead.

Reply to
Homer J Simpson
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Was it Jay Leno who said Haggard was 'cured' by excess, like when your dad catches you smoking and makes you smoke the whole pack? I wonder what was smoking on old Ted?

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

If there is a God, I'm sure he's more pissed at the behaiver of his believers then by that of the non-believers.

Reply to
kkkisok

Wow - I am impressed. Applause from the inscrutable larwe.

I do not subscribe to the 'magic' philosophy; I subscribe to the 'if it's properly defined it can be stated whether it will work' philosophy :)

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Inscrutable? I'm not often described that way.

(wry face) Maybe. It's easy to get into an ever-decreasing semantic spiral, because of differences regarding the definitions of "properly defined" and "work".

The first step to such a definition phase surely has to be characterizing the inputs. Carrying out this step precisely is not always possible. The best it's possible to say, given all due care and attention in the design process, is that if the inputs are within spec, the outputs will be within spec. However, without complete information about the inputs, the input spec may be ambiguous, which still leaves you with a gray area between "definitely meets spec" and "definitely doesn't meet spec" - and a correspondingly gray area between "works" and "doesn't work".

Reply to
larwe

--
You will when you die.
Reply to
John Fields

Are you claiming never to have lied?

Ian

Reply to
Ian Bell

I describe you as I 'feel' you, as it were. I am aware you have written books; from your posts I would say you are fully qualified to be read :)

Here lies the dilemma of the embedded hardware design engineer; many things can not possibly be fully characterised up front for many reasons, and that is when we 'grey-hairs' get called in; to provide either a hot fix or a final fix on new fabs. On other occasions we older designers actually design new equipment, and successfully because we understand what we are up against.

My previous statement though was quite serious; a properly operating piece of embedded equipment does not appear to be computing equipment at all - it is merely a box that performs a function, and does it day in, day out without fail. The fact it has a processor inside is irrelevant :)

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Another data point:

We had some visitors this weekend, a couple from back east. She's a computer scientist, he's an engineer who also teaches programming, both academics. It was made pretty clear to me that computer science is not immediately related to programming, and that computer science education does not seek to graduate people who can program.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

My sister has that background, plus a math degree. In Germany they call that something like Information Science but AFAICT it's the same thing as CS. Programming is not at all the main point in this curriculum. It is mostly heavy duty math, stuff I would certainly not enjoy at all. And after we both had our degrees, she in CS and me in EE, she was clearly the one with the better math skills right off the bat. Meantime, her math skills got even better. Me? Well, math is like eating pea soup. And I don't like pea soup.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

I have only met one or two, Physicists, EE's, and Chemists that can program are so common that you can hardly swing a cat without hitting one. I have even met a draftsman that was a good programmer.

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 JosephKK
 Gegen dummheit kampfen die Gotter Selbst, vergebens.  
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Reply to
joseph2k

I think I've noticed a correlation...

People good at foreign languages seem also to be good programmers.

Anyone else noticed this?

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Oui ;-)

Reply to
Tom Lucas

Yes, I have also noticed it. Must have to do with the language processing part of our brain; if good enough to have language related issues out of the way one can concentrate on the real work. Or sort of :-).

Dimiter

Reply to
Didi

The other good group I hear is philosophy majors. Again a language feature.

Ed (me? I'm an aboration. Neither skilled in foreign languages or philosphy.)

Reply to
Ed Prochak

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