Re: Job Market for Lisp and Haskell programmers, serious question.

A moron Tamas K Papp wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:20:34 +0200, Rainer Joswig wrote:
> > I read one of those. The guy was arguing that PI was a rational number.
> > He explained that there was some conspiracy going on so that this truth
> > is not revealed to the public. He spend lots of time to create fancy
> > drawings - probably the paper was typeset with something like TeX -
> > which at that time was not that widely available.
>
> I have a friend who is a mathematician at a major US university.
> Apparently their Math department gets quite a bit of mail from crackpots
> who claim similar things. Some even come to the building and put up
> fliers (!).

For you ignorant lisp morons out there, on the issues of math
crackpots , see:

Printed References On Plane Curves
http://xahlee.org/SpecialPlaneCurves...eferences.html

Quote:
«
Title:The Trisectors (amazon.com↗)
Author: Underwood Dudley↗
Publisher: Mathematical Association of America
Date: 1994-12
Comment: Exposition of the many angle-trisectors in history. This is a
very well written fascinating book. The author takes us thru the many
trisetors that he personally had been contacted or visited. He tells
us who they are, what they do, and what kind of ilk are they, if any.
One'd be surprised the numerousness of them besiege unisersities's
math department, even today.

It is interesting to note, that I myself have actually been contacted
by a angle-trisector in 2001, and asked by him to do some illustration
for him. The person actually hoped that I could help him broadcast his
“great discovery�. I tried to convince him that it is not possible,
and during the first meeting, realized that this persuasion is
impossible. It is with this incident when I found this book by
Underwood, and in fact, this trisector in particular is accounted in
the book. I contacted Underwood and confirmed the identity. (I did, in
fact, actually agreed to do drawing for the trisector and got paid for
it)
»

See also:

The Condition of Industrial Programers
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...rogramers.html

plain text version follows:

-------------------------------

Xah Lee, 2006-05

Before i stepped into the computing industry, my first industrial
programing experience was at Wolfram Research Inc as a intern in 1995.
(Wolfram Research is famously known for their highly successful
flagship product Mathematica) I thought, that the programers at
Wolfram are the world's top mathematicians, gathered together to
research and decide and write a extremely advanced technology. But i
realized it is not so. Not at all. In fact, we might say it's just a
bunch of Ph Ds (or equivalent experience). The people there, are not
unlike average white-collar Joes. Each working individually. And,
fights and bouts of arguments between co-workers are not uncommon.
Sometimes downright ugly in emails. Almost nothing is as i naively
imagined, as if some world's top mathematicians are gathered together
there, daily to confer and solve the world's top problems as in some
top secret government agency depicted in movies.

Well, that was my introduction to the industry. The bulk of my
surprise is due to my naiveness and inexperience of the industry, of
any industry, as i was just a intern and this is my first experience
seeing how the real world works.

After Wolfram, after a couple of years i went into the web programing
industry in 1998, using unix, Perl, Apache, Java, database
technologies, in the center of world's software technology the Silicon
Valley. My evaluation of industrial programers and how software are
written is a precipitous fall from my observations at Wolfram. In the
so-called Info Tech industry, the vast majority of programers are
poorly qualified. I learned this from my colleagues, and in dealing
with programers from other companies, service providers, data centers,
sys admins, API gateways, and duties of field tutoring. I didn't think
i have very qualified expertise in what i do, but the reality i
realized is that most are far lesser than me, and that is the common
situation. That they have no understanding of basic mathematics such
as trigonometry or calculus. Most have no interest in math whatsoever,
and would be hard pressed for them to explain what is a “algorithm�.

I have always thought, that programing X software of field Y usually
means that the programers are thoroughly fluent in languages,
protocols, tools of X, and also being a top expert in field of Y. But
to my great surprise, the fact is that that is almost never the case.
In fact, most of the time the programers simply just had to learn a
language, protocol, software tool, right at the moment as he is trying
to implement a software for a field he never had experience in. I
myself had to do jobs half of the time i've never done before.
Constantly I'm learning new languages, protocols, systems, tools,
APIs, other rising practices and technologies, reading semi-written or
delve into non-existent docs. It is the norm in the IT industry, that
most products are really produces of learning experiences. Extremely
hurried grasping of new technologies in competition with deadlines.
There is in fact little actual learning going on, as there are immense
pressure to simply “get it to (demonstrably) work� and shipit.

Thinking back, in fact the Wolfram people are the most knowledgeable
and inquisitive people i've met as colleagues, by far.

What prompted me to write this essay is after reading the essay Teach
Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig, 2001, at
http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html. In which, the LISP dignitary Peter
Norvig derides the widely popular computing books in the name of
Teaching Yourself X In (Fast) Days. Although i agree with his
sentiment that a language or technology takes time to master and use
well, that these books form somewhat of a damaging fad and subtly
multiply ignorance, but he fails to address the main point, that is:
the cause of the popularity of such books, and how to remedy the
situation.

When you work in the industry, and are given a responsibility of
coding in some new language the company decided to use, or emerging
protocol (such as voice-chat protocols or cellphone internet), or your
engineering group adopted a new team coding/reviewing process, you are
not going to tell you boss “nah, i want to do a good job so i'll study
the issue a few months before i contribute�. Chances are, you are
going to run out and buy a copy of “XYZ in 7 days�, and complete the
job in a way satisfactorily to your company, as well feeling proud of
your abilities in acquiring new material.

To see this in a different context, suppose you need to pass a
important Math XYZ exam or review in your career or get a certificate,
but you don't remember your Math XYZ. You will likely, run out and get
a “Math XYZ for Dummies�. Chances are, the book will indeedhelp you,
and you will pass your exam or interview, and actually have learned
something about XYZ, but never looked at Math XYZ squarely again.

These books are the bedrock of the industry. It is not because people
are impatient, or that they wish to hurry, but rather, it is the
condition of the IT industry, in the same way modern society drives
people to live certain life styles. No amount of patience or
proselytization can right this, except that we change the industry's
practice of quickly churning out bug-ridden software products to beat
competitors. Companies do that due to market forces, and the market
forces is a result of how people and organizations actually choose to
purchase software. In my opinion, a solution to this is by installing
the concept of responsible licenses. Please see this essay Responsible
Software Licensing and spread the word, at
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...e_license.html .

-----------------------------------

The reason, that many of the lispers here, are quite opaque to lisp's
problems despite repeated complaints from users for decades and
detailed expositions, can be compared to the numerous fanatics in
various sectors in society, from Mac fanatics to Christian fanatics to
flat earthers. It is interesting, that often the psychology of
behavior of human animals override rationality. This i think has
evolution psychology basis, i.e. such behavior are actually beneficial
to such people under the circumstances for at least short duration.

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

On Tue, 2 Sep 2008 03:41:54 -0700 (PDT), "xahlee@gmail.com"
<xahlee@gmail.com> wrote:

>Extremely
>hurried grasping of new technologies in competition with deadlines.

Actually, I've been personally acquainted with this problem and what
it entails, having worked for a short time as a liaison ("Project
Manager") between Japanese marketing personnel in Japan who didn't
speak English and Bangladesh PHP programmers in Bangladesh who spoke
very poor English.

One Bangladesh programmer who happened to be working locally in that
same office in Japan, when hearing of the problem of lack of learning
of new technologies, said that he thought that one solution was to
have programmers work in pairs, with one senior, experienced
programmer acting as a mentor to a junior programmer.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn't help much in
learning pioneer technologies; it only helps with technologies in
which the senior programmer already has some experience/knowledge.

To my astonishment, I once read somewhere that the average number of
programming language theory research papers that the average
programmer reads in a month is zero. At first, I couldn't believe
this. But having worked as a liaison between programmers and
marketing staff, I think it is quite true.

Most of the programmers whom I worked with were not interested in
programming theory, or even in programming per se, and spent most of
their free time in the office watching giant centipedes eating mice on
YouTube, chatting in Yahoo! Messenger, or sending e-mail. Once, I
tried discussing the Towers of Hanoi problem with one of them, and he
replied that it was "a very hard problem" in programming. I couldn't
believe this. Towers of Hanoi is a first-year student problem for
computer science students!

The problem seems to be one of lack of time and lack of interest. Most
programmers seem to be force-fed programming technologies that they
are not interested in, in a manner in which they are not allowed to
explore what is interesting about the topic. Therefore, they learn to
hate the topic, and proceed to spend all their free time trying to
forget about programming.

Curiosity is essential to learning, yet the environment does
everything it can to quash any potential curiosity. No wonder there
is no learning!

-- Benjamin L. Russell

On 3 set, 04:30, Benjamin L. Russell <DekuDekup...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
> Most of the programmers whom I worked with were not interested in
> programming theory, or even in programming per se, and spent most of
> their free time in the office watching giant centipedes eating mice on
> YouTube, chatting in Yahoo! Messenger, or sending e-mail.

Or reading newsgroups, if they are old-timers...

> Once, I
> tried discussing the Towers of Hanoi problem with one of them, and he
> replied that it was "a very hard problem" in programming. I couldn't
> believe this. Towers of Hanoi is a first-year student problem for
> computer science students!

That's the typical everyday joe. Most people I know from IT only
really know SQL as a programming language. And that is just to fetch
their precious user data in order to feed them to business rules
processors. Why should they give any thought to interesting new
problems so far fetched from their everyday domain? They just let
others write creative tools for them and are happy to just be the
middlemen between tools and users.

> Therefore, they learn to
> hate the topic, and proceed to spend all their free time trying to
> forget about programming.

Yes, but lack of curiosity and no desire to learn is all their fault
really. Most people are cattle and just enjoy eating grass, if there
is any. If there isn't any, they just die.

define-symbol-macro?

What the hell is that?

s/b defsymmacro, I smell a Schemer.

kenny

På Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:25:06 +0200, skrev Kenny <kentilton@gmail.com>:

> define-symbol-macro?
>
> What the hell is that?
>
> s/b defsymmacro, I smell a Schemer.
>

Same as define-condition, a Pitman name (He prefers whole words
remember)

It associates a symbol with a form which is verbatimly substituted in for
the symbol.

It was introduced to Lisp to support with-slots and with-accessors.
As such it is rarely called directly, but sometimes used in macros.

--------------
John Thingstad

On Sep 4, 12:25*am, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> define-symbol-macro?
>
> What the hell is that?
>
> s/b defsymmacro, I smell a Schemer.
>
> kenny

Brought to you by the Lispers who don't want to remove the fun from
their functions, the letter Qute, and the number 2.

On Sep 4, 12:25*am, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> define-symbol-macro?
>
> What the hell is that?
>
> s/b defsymmacro, I smell a Schemer.

(def symbol-macro kenny ...)

if you sue DEFINER

Cheers
--
Marco

namekuseijin wrote:
> On 3 set, 04:30, Benjamin L. Russell <DekuDekup...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Most of the programmers whom I worked with were not interested in
> > programming theory, or even in programming per se, and spent most of
> > their free time in the office watching giant centipedes eating mice on
> > YouTube, chatting in Yahoo! Messenger, or sending e-mail.
>
> Or reading newsgroups, if they are old-timers...
>
> > Once, I
> > tried discussing the Towers of Hanoi problem with one of them, and he
> > replied that it was "a very hard problem" in programming. I couldn't
> > believe this. Towers of Hanoi is a first-year student problem for
> > computer science students!
>
> That's the typical everyday joe. Most people I know from IT only
> really know SQL as a programming language. And that is just to fetch
> their precious user data in order to feed them to business rules
> processors. Why should they give any thought to interesting new
> problems so far fetched from their everyday domain? They just let
> others write creative tools for them and are happy to just be the
> middlemen between tools and users.
>
> > Therefore, they learn to
> > hate the topic, and proceed to spend all their free time trying to
> > forget about programming.
>
> Yes, but lack of curiosity and no desire to learn is all their fault
> really. Most people are cattle and just enjoy eating grass, if there
> is any. If there isn't any, they just die.
Most coders took programming as a job, something you do for money so
could spend them on things that you need and things that interests
you. If there was another job requring same effort and payed more they
would be doing that instead. Why would somebody be reading about tower
of hanoi when there is a good game on TV? If they need something to
advance their career so they could make more money so they could buy
bigger tv they will learn, it doesn't matter to them. It's the people
who see programming as more than work who are complaining.
Just imagine there is enormous demand for violin players, it pays good
and you can find a job easily. So if you aren't 100% tone deaf you
might say : I can't find programming job at least not one that pays
well, so here's a good career choice for me,in the end everybody has
to earn their bread somehow. So you go to learn violin playing in 24
lessons course, buy violin for dummies book and got a job. You're
doing your job and got payed, than somebody comes asking you do play
Nicolo Paganini Fifth Caprice. Shit man we only do pop music, what the
hell do you need those kind of crup? So continue playing vanilla pop
at work and program at home why the bozo practices Fifth Caprice.

bobi

Kenny <kentilton@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| define-symbol-macro?
| What the hell is that?
| s/b defsymmacro, I smell a Schemer.
+---------------

Indeed! See <http://rpw3.org/hacks/lisp/deflex.lisp>
for how a *former* Schemer uses DEFINE-SYMBOL-MACRO
to make life in a CL REPL a little more comfortable
(or a little more like Scheme, your choice). ;-} ;-}


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock <rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

On 4 set, 06:10, Slobodan Blazeski <slobodan.blaze...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Shit man we only do pop music, what the
> hell do you need those kind of crup? So continue playing vanilla pop
> at work and program at home why the bozo practices Fifth Caprice.

Yep. Shame there's an audience for well-crafted, ingenious music even
outside musicians themselves but not an audience for well-crafted,
ingenious code outside a few literate programmers, let alone users of
software made out of such code. Programmers work at the
backstage... :P