12. februar 2004

New issue of BookSlut. The new issue of BookSlut is online... You can see a couple of my reviews there... [David Harris' Science & Literature] 12:19:12 AM    comment [] Which came first - science or technology?. The Computer at Nature's Core. Think technology is just applied science? You're wrong. It's the other way around. A commentary by David F. Channell from Wired magazine. [Wired News] It seems to me that this argument is based on a spurious supposition: "Indeed, if computation is the basis of all nature, then science is just applied technology." Why would you suppose that computation is technology rather than science? Computation, in the sense meant by physicists, biologists, mathematicians or computer scientists when they use the word, is quite different to what is meant by an engineer or technologist might use the word. Although it is hard to define science and technology in any way that is acceptable to everybody, it seems fairly easy to agree that this difference in usage is sufficient to keep computation, as referred to by scientists, as part of science, rather than applied technology. [David Harris' Science & Literature] 12:18:39 AM    comment [] Programs that write programs. Following pointers from Ned Batchelder's recent excursion into code generation led me to another nice example of the power of dynamic languages. In order to streamline his use of C++, Ned wrote a little tool called cog which enables him to embed, in C++ programs, Python fragments that generate verbose and/or repetitive C++ constructs. He adds: For more about code generation in general, try: Dave Thomas interviewed about code generation. Dave Thomas is one of the Pragmatic Programmers, and I find I agree with him almost universally. He forbids putting the output of code generators under source control, I encourage it. We agree that the output should never be edited. The Code Generation page on the c2 wiki. As will happen with a wiki, this fractures off in many directions, with many different viewpoints, both for and against code generation. [Ned Batchelder] ... [Jon's Radio] 12:16:53 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Reidar Bringedal. Last update: 27.03.2004; 08:46:52.